


A Study in Angelic Behaviour

by ScrollingKingfisher



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate universe-Angels Are Animals, Angelic Flocks, Character Death (nobody you'll miss), Dubcon to Con, Dubious Consent, Gabriel thinks he has been an absolute gentlemen, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Sex, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, So much biology fieldwork, Spoiler-by human standards he has not, Weird Biology, sequential hermaphroditism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-10-04 07:33:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20467340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScrollingKingfisher/pseuds/ScrollingKingfisher
Summary: Sam signed up to be an intern in angelic conservation. Someone has to protect the endangered species. He's shipped out to the back of beyond, and sure, he expected the camping and the endless hours of fieldwork.He didn't expect to to become part of changing the world's understanding of angelic intelligence. And he did NOT expect to be courted by the very persistent alpha. But Gabriel isn't going to let a little thing like species get between them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone!  
So. Um. This one's not exactly my usual! Technically, it's a kink prompt, but since I submitted it then adopted it (I know don't judge me) I figure I should take full responsibility.  
PLEASE for the love of Chuck read the flippin' tags, but I hope you enjoy it! There's a whole lot of biology fieldwork descriptions to wade through before we get to the smut (lol sorry-not-sorry) but we will get there!
> 
> Dedicated to all the thirsty motherfuckers in the sabriel discord who have been slowly breaking down my internal shame by being absolutely shameless at every opportunity. Without you I would never have even started this, never mind publishing it. Yall're the best <3
> 
> Anyway! On with the show!

“So. You want an internship with the Angelic Conservation Trust.” The lady on the front desk raised a tired eyebrow at him.

Sam shuffled from foot to foot on the worn linoleum, glancing around at the faded seventies decor of the reception area. “Yes please, ma’am.” He tried not to sound too nervous, even if he was twisting his fingers together out of her eye line. “Am I in the right place? I’m meant to be here for my interview.”   
  
She laughed, quirking an eyebrow. “Interview? Oh honey,” she glanced down at his paperwork, “you graduated from Stanford, I’ll be surprised if they don’t walk you right through the door after shaking your hand. But yes, you’re in the right place. We need all the interns we can get. I’ll buzz you on through.” She pressed a button on her desk. “Ellen? I’ve got a Samuel Winchester here for his interview.”

“Great! Send him through please,” crackled the speaker.

The lady gestured to the door and Sam nodded gratefully as she buzzed him in. “Second floor, third door on your left, hon!” She called after him.

The rest of the Stanford headquarters of the Angelic Research and Conservation Trust were just as worn as the entrance- not dirty, but the linoleum floors were shiny from the passage of thousands of feet, and the walls which might once have been white had long since faded to a dull beige. Sam took the stairs, his footsteps echoing as he reached the second floor, and followed along the corridor until he reached the door with the plaque reading  _ Dr. Ellen Harvelle _ . He raised his hand to knock.

“Come on in!” called a voice from inside before he could.

Sam paused, then pushed open the door.

Inside, the room was cramped, but tidy. Specimens and stacks of paper and field equipment filled every available space, leaving only a narrow passage to get from one end of the room to the other. A woman sat at a desk in the far corner, and he smiled and nodded at her as he closed the door behind himself. A large shelf covered one wall, filled with scientific journals and folders of paper. He let his eyes play across the covers as he sat down-  _ A Preliminary Study of Angelic Flock Behaviours, Living With Harpies, Feather Variation in Angelids Across America _ -

“So you must be Sam. Sorry about the mess. Space is a little tight.”   
  
Sam quickly turned back to face her. Ellen Harvelle was a stern looking woman, her voice rough, her face lined and her silver-streaked blonde hair pulled back, but her lips quirked with knowing amusement. “Go on; take a good look. It’s nice to see someone so interested, honestly. Usually the interns are more interested in gettin’ away from their nagging parents than in any actual angel conservation.”

Sam let himself smile through his nerves, folding his hands in his lap. “Doctor Harvelle, I can assure you I’m not here because my parents wanted me out of the house.”

“Please, call me Ellen. Only the undergrads call me ‘Doctor Harvelle’.” Ellen sat back, inspecting him critically as she pulled out his CV. “So. You want an internship with us. I’m not complaining, Lord knows we need the help, but why us? Why angelic conservation? You were going to be a lawyer. It’s a bit of a career change, isn’t it?”   
  
“Uh, yeah, I know. But I was in my final year, and things…” things like Dad dying, and Dean having a mental breakdown, “things happened. It got a bit too intense, and, well.” He shrugged it off. “Here I am!”

“But why angels, specifically?” Ellen’s eyes were sharp.

“I don’t know. I’ve never exactly been around them, we never had anywhere near enough money for that, but I remember a few years ago when they first became popular as pets… it always kind of creeped me out, you know? I always thought they were too intelligent. And then celebrities started getting them, and I started to hear about the breeding farms, and the poaching, and the illegal wildlife trade, and…” He shrugged again. “I don’t know. I thought maybe I could make a difference when I was in law, try and get better protection for them, but I don’t think I’ll be able to go back to that for a few years.”   
  
Ellen seemed satisfied with that. “Well, lawyers are always useful, but if you want to start by making a difference on the ground then you’re in the right place. I don’t know about the centre, we’re pretty well-staffed here, but we always need people to help out with the fieldwork at our research stations.”   
  
“Research stations?”   
  
Ellen stood, pointing to a picture on the wall showing a wild-looking landscape of rolling forest with mountains towering in the background. “Yep. We’ve got the largest wild group of Celestials on the west coast. Can’t tell you the location yet, we’ve had to keep that a secret, but there’s some cutting edge world-class research going on out there. Would you be up for it?”   
  
“Sure!”   
  
Ellen laughed at his enthusiasm. “I’m gonna warn you now, fieldwork’s no picnic. You’ll be in tents, cooking over hobs, pissing in bushes and getting bitten by mosquitos for three months straight.”   
  
Well, Sam had never had enough camping trips as a kid anyway. He smiled up at her. “When do I start?”

.o0o.

Deep in the forest, just as the sun was rising above the horizon and the birds were starting to sing, the alpha stirred. 

He yawned. With one wing he propping himself up on the broad branch of the oak where he’d spent the night, stretching his arms over his head, listening to the rest of his flock stirring in the trees nearby. With a full body shudder, he stretched his wings as far up as they would go, feeling the stretch of tendons and strong muscles before letting them fold against his back, his down fluffing up then settling where it had been disturbed in the night. The light sifting through the leaves was bright- it would be a good day.

There was a chirp from underneath him. The alpha peered over the branch, hooking his wing-claws into the bark so that he could lean out further and see Alfie’s big eyes looking up at him, framed by the juvenile fluff of his faun wings.  _ “Are we going down to the meadow this morning?” _ the younger angel warbled up.  _ “Please, alpha! Please, Gabriel, can we? I want to watch the wingless!” _

Hmm. Good point. It was the third day of seven, and that meant that the wingless monkeys would be sitting in the meadow again. The alpha shrugged, humming deep in his chest with both sets of vocal chords.  _ “If you want.” _

The youngster let out an excited whistle and scurried off to tell his clutch-mate, his brown wings flashing as he glided between the branches.

The alpha grinned to himself at his youthful energy and sat up again. They would need to start gathering food this moon-cycle for the breeding season to come, but that wouldn’t be an issue- the wild apple trees had been productive this year, and the salmon weren’t in full spawning season yet. They could afford to take some time to relax in the meadow while the weather was still warm.

He looked out over the forest as he considered the wingless, his mood falling into something more sombre. The rest of the flock might have enjoyed their company, but the alpha was warier. He had seen the wingless ones in his last flock, back when he had only been a beta- he still remembered how they had come in the night and taken his brothers. How they had stank of blood and violence as they had shot his alphas and taken his siblings and his chicks while he hid in the bushes, terrified into stillness.

But that had been a long time ago. Winters and winters, now. He’d been younger, and not alpha yet. 

And anyway, these wingless that liked to come and watch them were smaller, and squashier, and didn’t smell like violence. They chittered at him in their own gabbled noises, but he’d worked out which ones corresponded to him- Gabriel, they called him, or Loki, if he was annoying them. And he annoyed them a lot- it was hilarious to watch their frustration as their foolish attempts to catch him failed. It was so funny to watch their faces scrunch up and listen to the dismay in their guttural honking whenever he slipped out of their latest trap. 

But they didn’t mean harm, so he tolerated them on his territory. For now. 

He leapt off the branch, and three beats of his powerful wings were enough to lift him out of the treetops and into the crisp morning air. Soon, he’d need to start building an actual nest where the flock could spend the nesting season and the winter to come- he could feel the urge slowly building under his skin, the prickle of his mating plumage just starting to emerge, but there was still a little time yet. This year felt different, for some reason.

He could feel it in the air. Something was about to change.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evenin' everyone! So; several apologies to make. Firstly, sorry for taking so damn long, but it has been One Hell of a Week. Lots of drama, yall know how it is. Second apology for the mis-tag. To confirm, there is NO MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. I was trying to punch in the graphic violence warning instead and my finger slipped. And thirdly, big sorry to all of those who have left your lovely comments and I haven't responded yet! I have a browser issue lol hopefully it resolves itself.
> 
> Anyway. Onward!

Sam felt like he’d been staring out of the window forever. 

They’d started their journey hours ago, landing in Spokane (a place which he’d never even heard of) and being picked up by a large, amicable man called Benny who they’d sent out to ferry him and all his luggage to their final destination. As they travelled, the landscape got progressively wilder, the road dwindling from highway to single file, and finally now to a rutted, unpaved, unmarked track. The trees were packed tight along the road, swathes of cedars and maple blocking his view, but then the landscape suddenly opened out in front of him and he could see for miles, just as it had been in the picture in Ellen’s office- untouched rolling forest on the other side of a meadow studded with wildflowers, and in the distance, mountains capped with snow. 

“Woah,” he breathed. 

Benny chuckled from the driver’s seat. “Plenty where that came from. Gorgeous, ain’t it?”

The track turned a corner, and tucked away in a corner of the clearing was the camp. The truck came to a stop just outside the circle of tents. 

Benny threw his door open with a creaking clunk, groaning as he stretched his legs. “Home sweet home! Come on, let’s find Garth and get you settled in.”

Sam swung out of the cab, letting the door slam shut behind him, and dug in the back for his small personal duffel bag. Already people were emerging from the tents and starting to come up to them, laughing and clapping Benny on the back as they helped to unload the provisions from the back of the truck.

“Hey! New kid!”

Sam turned. The man coming towards him was almost as tall as he was but rake thin and gangly. His beaming smile nearly met his large ears as he held out his hand for Sam to shake.

“Garth, nice to meetcha! Sam, right? I’m the camp organiser for this little trip, so I thought I’d come over and tell you all the rules and get you set up.” He beckoned Sam towards the tents and Sam followed, duffel over his shoulder, listening attentively. “We’re pretty straightforward. Everyone helps with the cooking, the cleaning, and camp maintenance. Any trash gets taken back with us, don’t leave a single wrapper or you’ll get murdered by Missouri, I’m being serious, that lady is scary. Nice but scary.” Garth led him past a large fire pit surrounded by large logs and over to a camper van containing several laptops. “Any data has gotta be entered in the evenings, and we all help out with that- the generators are on from six till nine, so any electronics get charged then. Apart from that, be cool with the rest of the campers! But you seem like a friendly guy, I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that. They’re a nice bunch, we’re like one big extended family, we all have dinner and sometimes games in the evenings, if you like to join. Does that sound good?” Sam nodded. “Awesome! Here, this is your tent,” he gestured to the nearest one, “I’ll leave you to get unpacked. Just holler when you’re done, and then you can come and meet the research team!”

Sam thanked him, then got to work unpacking. It was quite a large space for just him, but it was a relief to have enough length to stretch out his six foot frame, and he supposed that if he was going to be out here for a month he’d probably be thankful for the room. 

Once he was done, he hurried back towards the centre of camp. More people had gathered around the fire pit while he’d been gone, all in practical outdoor gear, sitting on the logs and chatting. 

“Sam!” Garth was beaming at him again. A few of the people sitting on the logs broke off their conversations to turn and look, and Sam waved at them, smiling awkwardly. Garth slung a familiar arm around his shoulders. “Say hi to the team! This is Jo, Charlie, Kevin, and Claire. They’re your fellow helpers. And then there’s Bobby, our senior researcher,” A man in a cap grunted at him and waved without looking up from his book, “And his research partner Lenore!” Lenore smiled kindly at him. “Ash is our tech dude, but he only comes out in the evenings. We think he might be nocturnal.” Kevin and Charlie laughed, and Claire gave a snort of amusement.

“Nice to meet you all!” Sam tried to fold himself down onto one of the logs. The others seemed younger than him at least, but there was one thing that he was still feeling a little self-conscious about. “So, uh… what do we do? Ellen said it varies and you’d tell me when I got here,” He couldn’t help feeling a bit stupid.

Jo smiled at him. “No worries. All of us were the same, mum likes to keep it cryptic. In the morning, we’ll drive out to the site where the angels are gathering and we’ll take data, we’ll show you what to do.” 

Charlie dropped down next to him, grinning at him with enthusiasm from under her bright red hair. “So! How much do you know about Angelic Studies?”   
  
Sam scratched the back of his neck. “I… uh… I read some papers?”

“Okay, well,” Charlie chattered, “at this site we’re helping out with data gathering, so most of the time when we’re in the field we’re just observing them- Bobby’s got a joint project with Lenore on angelic intelligence and social structure, so we watch what they do and record interactions. The rut’s coming up in three weeks or so, so at least we’ll have more to record than ‘social grooming’ for every interaction.” The others all grumbled agreement, and Kevin rolled his eyes. 

Jo spoke up again. “Bobby’s next study on movement tracking’s gonna be starting in a week or so- he just got the funding to afford a load of new transmitters, that’s what came in with you, so we’ll be helping with fitting them. He doesn’t look it but he’s really excited about it. On the inside.” 

They all turned to watch Bobby. For a second, Sam thought he hadn’t heard them, but then, without looking up, he flipped the bird at them. Charlie and Kevin burst into roars of laughter. Sam saw the corner of Bobby’s beard twitch in a hidden smile before he went back to his book.

“Anyway, like I was saying,” Jo continued, “Most of them already have tags on so you can tell who’s who. Well, apart from Loki, but you’ll know who he is anyway. So it’ll just be sticking the new transmitters on and observing them, it shouldn’t be too hard. They’re very docile.”

“And they’re super curious. They love Garth’s ears, for some reason,” Kevin told him, obviously starting to warm up to him now the conversation was flowing. “And the last time Bobby went into the field, they swarmed him! It was like piranhas, we thought they’d leave a pile of bones behind, turns out they were just obsessed with his beard.”

“Nothin’ wrong with a bit of beard envy,” Bobby muttered. 

“Okay everyone,” Garth called over their heads, “Go get washed up for dinner! Yall’ve got an early start tomorrow and I don’t want anyone late for breakfast!”

.o0o.

Garth was right about the early start. Sam was still yawning as he helped load the last of the gear into the waiting trucks, regretting staying up talking with the others the night before. It had been worth it though- they were good people, a close-knit bunch, and even after one night he was starting to feel like one of the team.

Claire was already snoozing in the backseat when he got in. Kevin swung himself up into the driver’s seat next to him, slamming the door behind himself and starting the engine. 

“Are you old enough to drive this?” Sam asked.   
  
Kevin gave him a scathing look as he put it into gear. “Dude, I’m eighteen, not eight!”

The other trucks started up as well, all of them peeling away from camp in different directions. Charlie had explained to him the night before- some of the data was about the angels themselves, but they were also gathering data about the rest of the environment and the animals that lived in it. “That way we can create better sanctuaries!” she’d explained. But because it was Sam’s first day, it had been decided that he would be on the angel team so he could see for himself what exactly they were trying to protect.

Soon, the other trucks were out of sight, and they were heading further into the wilderness. The sun was nearly up, the sky a delicate blue threaded through with pink by the time Kevin drove them out of the forest and into another clearing, cranking on the handbrake.

“We’re here!”

With a sullen groan, Claire pushed open her door, practically falling out. By the time Sam had got out to help, she had lugged the bag off the back of the truck, gesturing for Sam to collect his as well. “Alright, let’s go!”

The grass in this meadow was much longer than at the camp. The tall seed heads came up to Sam’s waist, half-way up Claire and Kevin’s chests, and wading through them was tiring work. It seemed like a long walk before they started to approach the other end of the meadow.

Claire dumped her bag down with a relieved sigh. “This’ll do. Come on, Kev, help me set up the sound kit. Sam, could you spread out that tarp for us? And make sure you put the emergency satellite phone somewhere safe, do  _ not  _ lose it or Lenore will have us assassinated. Then you can come watch while we do the microphones.”

Sam set it out and then watched as the two squabbled over setting up the scientific equipment. By the time they were finished the sun had risen properly- the light sparkled off the dew clinging to the grasses and the webs hanging between them, turning the whole meadow into a shining sea.

Sam had a thought and turned to the others where they were getting comfortable sitting on the tarp. “Hey, uh… won’t we need binoculars or something?”

Claire huffed a laugh, pulling a blanket out of her bag and spreading it out to sit on. “No. Trust me, you’re not going to need the scope. They come right up to us.”

“What, seriously?”

Kevin grinned at him. “Yeah, we tried to avoid contact at first, but honestly? They’re too curious and friendly for their own good.” He sat down as well. “Angels will walk right up to you and start grooming your hair if you let them, man. We don’t initiate contact, but it’s easier to see things if you’re right up close to them.”

“Maybe if they were a little less curious they wouldn’t have been poached from ninety-five percent of their former range,” Claire grumbled.

Sam tuned them out as he started out at the grass, nervousness and anticipation bubbling in his stomach. He’d known that he was going to be studying the angels, but honestly he’d never expected to get up close and personal with them. He’d heard the research stories the previous evening but he’d assumed that the others had been exaggerating. Angels were still wild animals- despite their legendary docility, angels had incredibly powerful muscles to lift their large frames off the ground, and there had been a few angel-related deaths over the years. So he couldn’t deny how exposed he felt with nothing but waving grass in every direction. 

“Hey, big guy! Would you chill? They don’t eat humans.” Claire’s voice came loud and annoyed from behind him. “Sit down, you’re making me nervous.”

Reluctantly, Sam stopped watching the treeline and sat on the tarp, still fighting the urge to jump up and look around to make sure they weren’t being snuck up on. 

“They should be here any minute now,” Kevin said, rifling through his rucksack for a pen.

And sure enough, just as he said it, Sam caught sight of something moving fast along the treeline. It fell out of sight. 

Where was it? Where did it go? Sam craned his neck, sitting up straight to see, but a second later his heart jumped into his throat as it appeared far closer then he’d thought it was, skimming silently over the tall grass towards them like a shark through the water.

“Shit!"

It was still coming! Was it going to stop? He was scrabbling backwards as it barreled towards them when it suddenly swooped up in front of them, massive wings spreading to fill the sky, flapping violently and covering them with wind and dust. 

“Alfie!!” Sam heard Kevin complain over the sandstorm. 

When he opened his eyes, the angel had stumbled to a stop in front of them. Sam stared, captivated.

They were so much  _ bigger  _ up close. Wild angels might have been slightly smaller on average than a regular human, but their wings dwarfed their light aerodynamic frames, even when folded. They twitched, strong sheets of muscle and bone, hidden under a coating of sleek brown feathers. Something flexed along the top edge, just after the wrist, and Sam realised he could see the claws poking out, the pair of digits nearly hidden by the feathers, like a dinosaur’s wing. The rest of his body was almost human. Fluffy down feathers were scattered patchily across his chest, growing thicker and fluffier around his groin. His face was smooth, almost boyish still, Sam noticed. He must be young.

The angel- Alfie- cocked his head and made a high chirrup, his wings shuffling against his back as he edged closer, half stooped over. The stripe of feathers running along the top of his head, blending into his hair, rose into a wispy crest as he looked at them. He didn’t seem to be afraid of Kevin or Claire at all, but he kept glancing at Sam, his wings flinching up to spread a little every time he shifted, showing off the white mottles on his plumage. Claire rolled her eyes and turned her attention to scrolling on her phone.

“This is Alfie, say hi.” He turned back to the angel. “Come on, man, he’s just another human. You’re not scared of us, right? No, I didn’t think so.” Kevin rummaged in his bag again, and Alfie turned all his attention to him, chirruping again before making a melodious, inhuman warble and hopping closer to peer at whatever Kevin was getting out. As he bent down, turning his back to Sam, Sam noticed something orange among the beige plumage- attached to the leading edge of the wing was a plastic tag, about the size of his hand, with the letters ALF emblazoned on it in bold black and a string of numbers underneath. 

“No, get off, you know you’re not allowed our food!” 

Alfie clucked loudly as Kevin shooed him off, half-spreading his wings and fanning his vestigial tail as he danced backwards. He stopped, hesitated for a second, then started creeping closer again, crooning cajolingly.

“No!” Kevin pointed a warning finger at him, which made his crest rise even higher as he reared back, affronted. 

Sam jumped and ducked as there was another thunder of beating wings directly behind him. He whirled, just as another angel, with orange-brown rust coloured wings this time, hopped past him with a loud chitter and launched itself at Alfie, bowling him head over heels. Alfie squarked, kicking and wrestling until he was free of the other angel and scampered away from Kevin. They chased each other for a second, squabbling, before settling down to groom each other’s feathers.

Kevin turned to Sam, gesturing at them with a pen as he pulled out a checksheet. “See? This is what it’s like all the time. We’ve seen nothing but grooming behaviour for  _ weeks _ , I can’t wait until the breeding season for something more interesting than who’s preening who and trying to decipher what all the vocalisations mean.”

Sam watched them, combing through each other’s feathers and chattering to one another. They were clearly communicating. “Bobby’s the lead researcher here, right? Has he found anything yet?”

Kevin sighed, adding yet another tick to his checksheet. “Yeah, he got published. They’ve got a super complex social hierarchy system which we can tell based on who preens who. They’re arranged into groups called flocks which all breed cooperatively. At the bottom of the pecking order, you’ve got the helpers, like these guys- they’re usually adolescents from previous clutches or lone individuals trying to join the group, they help out with raising the broods. Then, you’ve got the breeders, who lay the eggs and sit on them. And then, right at the top, you’ve got the alpha.” He paused. “You do know about the whole thing with angel sexing, yeah?” 

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I remember. They’re not determined from birth, like mammals?” Kevin nodded, so he continued. “Once they reach maturity, they can all produce eggs. And then the most dominant individual changes into the alpha who fertilises the whole flock, right?”

“Right,” Kevin confirmed. “So there’s the alpha at the top of the hierarchy, defending the flock from predators and whatever. Most of the year they’re pretty chill, but once a year the rut happens, when the alpha has to prove to the rest of the flock they’ve still got what it takes to father all the chicks. Some alphas get real aggressive towards humans around rut, so we’ll have to see what Loki’s like before we know how close we can get, but Bobby really wants footage of him displaying. They didn’t breed last year.”   
  
“Loki’s the alpha, right?” Sam watched as another angel, this one with soft cream wings, came gliding in. Instantly the other two started fawning over her, wings fluttering as they combed through her feathers and hair.

“Yeah. Well, not really. His tag reads GAB and we were gonna call him Gabriel, but we never managed to catch him to get the tag on and he plays tricks on us, man, I swear. He knows exactly what he’s doing. We tried to trap him after we couldn’t get close enough to tag him, but he would like, fish the bait out without setting the trigger off, then sit on top of the trap and watch us as he ate it. He cost us a hundred and fifty dollars in food and we didn’t even manage to catch him once. He laughs at our pain.” Kevin handed Sam a spare data sheet and a pen. “So we nicknamed him Loki, because he’s a little shit. But you’ll never see him close up. After the first few weeks we just didn’t see him. We know he’s around, because we’ve caught him on the camera traps and he keeps raiding camp and stealing the aerials off the trucks, but as soon as we arrive? He’s gone.”

They watched for the rest of the day as the flock gamboled around him. Slowly, over the morning, the number of angels gathered around their little camp built, until they were sitting in the middle of fifteen of the winged creatures, all preening and sunbathing. Sam watched them, fascinated, while Kevin took a nap and Claire played moodily on her phone. They were constantly chirping and churring to one another, their wings flicking and ruffling as they vocalised. The younger angels would break off in fits of childish energy to chase each other around the clearing while the others watched indulgently. He saw an older angel, with dark skin and silver streaking his hair and feathers, use a stick as a tool to groom his neighbour with. Why had anyone ever thought they weren’t intelligent?

It was late in the day by the time Claire stood, stretching with a groan. “Finally. Come on you guys, help me pack up. Let’s head back.”   
  
The angels lounging around them looked up at the sound of her voice, stirring. The older angel gave a low hooting call and took flight, several of the others taking off in his wake and heading for the trees. They looked almost magical in the air- graceful in a way that humans never were. Reluctantly tearing his eyes away, Sam helped to dismantle everything, carefully packing the microphones into their protective cases and helping Claire to fold the tarp. By the time they were done, the angels were all gone, the percussive sounds of heavy wingbeats fading away towards the forest.

“Come on, boys! Let’s go, I’m hungry.”   
  
With one last glance back, Sam picked up the last of their stuff and trailed after the others in the direction of the jeep. It was just as far to carry everything back as it had been to get there. He was huffing just like the other two by the time he reached the truck, dumping the kit into the back unceremoniously. Claire had already put her things away, but Kevin helped him to secure the microphone cases so they wouldn’t get jostled on the trip back

“Thanks for that! This is so much easier with three people.” Kevin glanced over the pile of blankets. “Hey, you remembered to pick up the satellite phone, didn’t you?”   
  
“I thought you had it?” 

They both looked at each other, then back at the pile of kit. Internally, Sam groaned. He was gonna have to hike all the way back now! 

“I’ll be back in like fifteen minutes.” He turned back to the meadow.

“We’ll wait here!” Kevin called after him. 

Sam forged on, the truck quickly moving out of view behind him. 

The sun was getting low as he walked, casting orange light over him as he waded through the grass, and lighting up the tops until they shone. He squinted into the light, raising a hand to shield his eyes. He was going the right way, right?   
  
But then with relief he saw it there in front of him. There was the patch of flattened grass where they’d been sitting. Now to find the phone.

Sam cast his eyes around, searching, and yes! There it was. Well, that had been easy. He bent, snatching the satellite phone triumphantly out of the grass, and turned to go.

There was a rustle.

Sam froze. Oh shit, that had sounded… that had sounded like something big. Suddenly, he was very aware again of how exposed he was. His thoughts darted nervously. What else was out here? Elk? Wolves? Bears, even. What would he even do if it was one? Should he run? Should he stay still and hope it moved off? He thought he’d read something about climbing to get away from bears. Should he make a break for the trees?   
  
Okay Sam, calm down. Maybe it’s not a bear at all. Maybe one of the others came to look for you. Deep breath. 

Ever so slowly, he turned. 

“Hello?” He called into the still evening air.

Silence. Then-

An eerie echo came from the treeline. “~Hellooo~” 

Sam whipped towards the noise and nearly jumped out of his skin. There, standing at the very edge of the clearing, almost blending into the trees, was an angel. Watching him. 

He knew, even when it was half-hidden by the trees, that it wasn’t any of the angels Sam had seen so far. There was something different about the way it held itself. Its wings looked bulkier, more powerful. Something about the way it was watching him made Sam feel… nervous. It cocked its head, still silent, and Sam slowly held up a hand. “Hey there, little-”

The angel leapt forward.

Sam stumbled back as it glided to the little patch of flattened grass, landing silently just a few meters from him. It was definitely larger than the others had been. Its massive wings stayed half spread, mantled up over it in an aggressive display so that its body was cast in shadow. A loud, threatening clicking came from its open mouth. Sam was frozen again, half couched, ready to run. Could he outrun it, if it decided to attack? Probably not. 

It peered forwards, observing him. And slowly, the wings started to lower out of their tense position, and Sam could finally see the angel properly. The sun lit the strong, slightly crooked bridge of his nose, highlighted an eyebrow that was quirked in quizzical curiosity, and shone off the wild curls at the nape of his neck. He was broad shouldered, his arms strong, and even though he was a full head shorter than Sam, he had a feeling that the angel could probably bench press him without breaking a sweat. The angel peered closer, eyes narrowing.

“Wait, you’re Gabriel, aren’t you? The flock alpha, the one they nicknamed Loki.”

On hearing the name, the angel perked up in unmistakable recognition. His wings dropped to fold against his back. Any residual wariness in his expression melted away into pure mischief. He started moving around Sam, his head tilting at odd angles, whistling and chirping, his wings flicking behind him in little jerky movements. Sam turned to watch him, then resisted the urge to back away as the angel came closer, almost within touching distance, leaning towards him and sniffing.

“Hey there, Gabe...” he tried not to sound too nervous.

Gabriel leaned back, clicking his tongue a few times, eyes on Sam’s face and narrowed in obvious concentration. Was he being aggressive or just curious? Sam was trying to work out what he could be thinking and how wary he should be when Gabriel clicked again, then made a “Hey!”

For a second, Sam thought that maybe it had been a coincidence- a random sound that was similar to words. But then Gabriel said it again. 

“Gabrrrrrrr….” The word trailed off into an excited whistling trill. Oh my God, that had been… that had been a word. Not a sound, not an approximation, a proper  _ word  _ coming out of the angel’s mouth. Sam gaped at him. Gabriel grinned, shuffling his wings excitedly to himself and leaning forwards. Sam leant forwards too, fear forgotten.

“Hey! Can you… can you understand me?”

“Hey! Me! Understaaand. Me, me me!”

Sam’s brain whirled. So he wasn’t understanding, not yet, but the mimicry was amazing. 

A voice called in the distance. “Saaam!” 

Gabriel’s head popped up, staring over Sam’s shoulder at the noise of Kevin yelling. “Hey, Sam! Where are you? We need to go!” 

Sam was about to reply, when Gabriel spoke again behind him.

“Sam!”

Sam whipped back around to stare at the angel, who was watching him intently. He reached forwards, and with one finger, prodded him in the chest. “Sam!” 

All Sam could do was gape at him.   
  
“Sam!” Gabriel barked again, stepping back, then, with a loud, kookaburra cackle that made Sam jump, he leapt into the air, his wings spreading wide. For half a second he almost seemed to hover over the meadow, and the last of the sun’s light caught in his feathers and Sam realised in a sudden flash that they weren’t brown like he’d thought, they were  _ gold  _ and they  _ shone- _

And then Gabriel’s wings swept down and he was off, swooping up to crest the trees at the edge of the clearing, and in a blink of an eye, he was gone.

Sam stared after him, gobsmacked. 

Kevin tumbled from the grass behind him, out of breath. “What’d I miss?”


	3. Chapter 3

The wingless walked out of the meadow, glancing back occasionally, and Gabriel watched him go from the safety of the trees. Well, gawked would have been a better word. 

Gabriel had been observing from the trees all day as the wingless had watched his flock with fascination. It was unusual to see that level of interest. It had made Gabriel suspicious- what if he was that interested for a reason? So like any new thing, Gabriel had felt it was his responsibility to check him out, to make sure he wouldn’t be a threat. 

And he was so glad that he had. There was no scent of violence on him at all. The wingless seemed to simply be genuinely awestruck once he’d got over his initial nervousness, unable to take his eyes off him, and when Gabriel had mimicked back a few of his calls he’d looked so surprised that Gabriel hadn’t been able to hold in his laughter. Oh, he could see how much fun he could have with that!

And in addition to all that, there was no escaping the fact that the wingless was absolutely  _ gorgeous _ . He’d never seen an ape so tall! He might have had no wings, but Gabriel was entranced. The elegant way those long, long legs carrying him through the grass. Sam, that was the name the other wingless had used. He was so curious, like a fledgling, handling that writing stick so carefully in his huge hands. The graceful way he swept that long hair back behind his ears. And his _eyes_...

Hannah landed next to him, making the bough shake as she alighted. She sidling up to him on the branch, her eyes narrowed as she glanced from him to the meadow where the car was driving off in the distance, and then she grinned.  _ “You like him, don’t you?” _ she whistled.  _ “The new tall one.” _ __   
__   
Gabriel shrugged his wings noncommittally.  _ “I think he’s more interesting than the rest of them.” _ __   
_   
_ Her grin turned sly.  __ “Sure, interesting. So. Are you going to make a move?”

_ “NO!” _ Gabriel hissed, affronted, puffing his crest feathers up in indignation.  _ “He’s a wingless! And anyway, the rut isn’t for half a moon yet!” _

Hannah just raised an eyebrow at him, not intimidated in the slightest by his posturing, and started to preen her tertials. 

She was just teasing him, he knew that. Deliberately suggesting something utterly ridiculous to wind him up. But now that Hannah had said it… he couldn’t get the idea of inviting the beautiful wingless into his flock out of his mind. It was stuck there in his imagination. Just the thought of displaying to him and inviting him into the nest made his wings want to flutter. And having a wingless in the flock could be useful too...

Gabriel sighed, deflating and shaking his wings out. It was a nice fantasy. But the wingless didn’t understand the ways of angels. Gabriel had watched as his flockmates had spent many fruitless hours in the meadow trying to teach the wingless to talk. They had cooed and cooed at them, like fledglings just out of their shells, but the apes never reacted, just stared blankly and scribbled on their bark-sheets.

Many of the flock had given up. They had concluded that the wingless were dull and stupid, or maybe just not intelligent enough to comprehend language. They didn’t even react to half the words! And initially, Gabriel had thought the same. 

But after the encounter he’d just had he was starting to wonder. He’d always assumed that the wingless’ chittering was just something they did- not anything with rhyme or reason to it. They obviously had name-sounds, but he’d thought that that was it. But when he’d repeated back a few of the odd calls, Sam had been so excited that Gabriel was starting to wonder if they had meaning after all. 

Maybe, if they could communicate, he could get him to understand? If the wingless wouldn’t speak the angels’ tongue, maybe Gabriel could learn theirs. And maybe he could find a way to convince him...

Gabriel was going to get the wingless-  _ Sam-  _ to join his flock if it was the last thing he did.

.o0o.

“So, Sam, how was your first day on the job?” Lenore asked him with a smile as she walked past, arms full of long metal poles.

Sam smiled at her, hanging the tarp out to dry. “Good, I think! The angels are amazing.”   
  
Claire laughed as she went past. “Good? He did awesome! He managed to get up close to Loki.”

Lenore stopped short, her eyebrows rising. The front end of the poles dipped alarmingly as she stared at him, nearly skewering Garth who was walking in the other direction. “Really? You saw him?”   
  
“Saw him? He got within ten feet of him!”

Sam felt his cheeks burning under Lenore’s surprised and re-assessing gaze.

Claire grinned at him, elbowing him in the ribs. "Get used to it, angel-whisperer, you're about to be the camp celebrity!"

Sure enough, by the time they were all eating dinner, the news that Sam had seen the elusive angel seemed to have spread around the entire camp. Even Ash knew, and he could only have been awake for half an hour. 

“...And then Loki saw me coming and bam!” Kevin mimed an explosion with his hands. “He was gone! Flew back into the trees like he was never even there.”

“I just went back and there he was,” Sam muttered into his drink, a little embarrassed at all the attention. “I didn’t even do anything.”   
  
“Sam, honey, you’re underestimating yourself.” Missouri told him as she passed a bowl to Benny. “These folks literally never see him. If you even caught sight of him, he must really like you for some reason.”

“Well here! Since apparently you’ve got more chance of pinning it on him than the rest of us,” Bobby threw something across the campfire at him, flashing in the light. Sam missed it. It landed in the dirt at his feet and he picked it up off the ground- it was a golden tag, with a tracker attached. He turned it over to see the embossed letters ‘GAB’. 

Bobby pulled out his spoon and went to collect his dinner. “You ever get that close to him again? Stick it on ‘im.”

Sam turned the tag over in his hands, inspecting it curiously. The thing was made up of two coloured tags, about the size of his hand, joined together with a short, thin piece of metal, with a pair of soft washers between them. 

He looked up at Jo who was sitting next to him. “How do I even put this on?”   
  
“You pull it apart like this, here,” Jo took it off his hands, pressing something and pulling the two tags apart. Sam realised that the metal was actually more of a spike, with one sharpened end. “You pull out the wing. Imagine a wing like your arm- the top part of it is your wrist and hand. Angels have a thin piece of skin along the front of the wing that stretches between their shoulder and their wrist. We put this through that piece of skin,” She mimed stabbing with the pointy half of the tag, “and then we attach the other half of the tag and it clicks into place like this, see? And then there’s a tag on the bottom and the top of the wing, and they don’t come off.”

“Doesn’t it hurt them?” Sam asked, concerned.   
  
Jo shrugged. “No more than piercing an ear. Maybe even less, none of the angels I’ve tagged even flinched. They tend to preen them just like feathers. We kept an eye on them at first in case they wore on the feathers or affected flight or anything like that, but we haven’t had any problems with them yet.”

Charlie looked up from her phone with a grimace, breaking into the cheerful atmosphere. “Bad news, guys- looks like the Kardashians have bought one of those micro-angels.”   
  
There were groans of dismay from around the campfire. “Poor creature,” muttered Lenore under her breath.

“Don’t they know they’re fucking up their genetics?” Kevin complained angrily. “Those micro-variants are basically just inbreeding! Everyone’s going to want to buy them now. They’re gonna have so many health issues.”

“And that’s without all the harm caused by the poaching of the wild populations,” added Charlie, still scrolling. “There’s all these photos of them making it try on cutesy little outfits, but I bet once they’ve had their fun it’s back in a tiny cage. They’ve only bought one, too. Can you imagine keeping an angel on its own? That’s just cruel. They can’t even groom all of their own wings! It’ll be plucking out its own feathers from boredom and loneliness by this time next week.”

“They don’t care though, do they?” Claire said, her face like thunder. “Fucking bastards.” 

Everybody subsided into silence after that, the gloomy mood lasting until everyone had eaten their meals. The circle broke after that, some heading off to help input the day’s data, others helping with the many chores around the camp. Sam found himself being handed a dish cloth, and pointed towards where Bobby was elbow-deep in suds, rinsing off the pots and pans.

For a while they cleaned in companionable silence, broken only by the gentle clink of the dishes in the sink and the occasional muffled laughter coming from the cabin where the computers were.

“So. The flock alpha likes you.” Bobby broke the quiet. 

Sam looked up. Bobby’s eyes were fixed firmly on his scrubbing, but he was obviously listening, even as he rubbed at a particularly stubborn grease spot. “He ain’t fond of many people, that one. Real unusual angel.”

“Yeah, I… I heard.”

Bobby stopped cleaning for a moment, twisting to face him. “So. Tell me the truth. What really got you coming out here?” 

Well, that hadn’t been the question Sam had been expecting. He put down the plate he’d been drying and blinked down at Bobby in confusion. “Uh… what do you mean?”    
Bobby snorted, handing him another plate. “Come on, Sam. I know the beard fools people, but I’m not stupid. Nobody signs up to be bitten by mosquitos and rained on for three solid months without a motive.”

Oh. Bobby probably thought he’d come out here on a whim- Sam remembered what Ellen had said about parents packing their kids off to do an internship just to get them out of the house. Sam sighed. “Well, I was interested before, but it was my brother that made me decide. He’s a cop, and he worked a joint case with the local animal rescue squad about two years back. It was a bust on an angel mill. I caught sight of some of the case photos and-” Sam swallowed. He’d done his best to forget the emaciated bodies, naked of feathers, covered in their own filth, but it wasn’t a sight easily forgotten. 

He closed his eyes. “I wanted to make a difference. They caught the owners but all they got was a six-month sentence, a fine and a ban on keeping angels in the future. It just… it wasn’t right! It wasn’t enough! Three of those angels were dead by the time they got there, and they had to euthanize two others because they were that bad.” He put another plate on the drying rack. “I thought I could help get better sentencing, try to prevent that sort of thing happening from that end, but being a lawyer… didn’t work out so well. So here I am.”

Bobby nodded, going back to his washing up. “So you’re tryin’ your hand at practical conservation instead.”

Sam smiled as he took the soapy mug Bobby offered him. “Yeah, I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would. The angels are just... they're so awesome! Especially Gabriel. He's got so much presence, you know? The way he looked right at me... I didn’t really expect to get within ten feet of an alpha angel mimicking all my words back to me on the first day, that's all.”

Bobby stopped scrubbing and whipped around, his eyes suddenly sharp. “He mimicked you?”

“Yeah?” Sam paused his drying again. “Do they not all do that? He was really good at it, I thought it must have been an angel thing.”

But Bobby’s eyes were wide, his mouth open. It was the most excited Sam had seen the man. “Hell no, kid! That’s great news! You have no idea how pleased I am to hear that. Don’t tell the others, but,” Bobby looked around, lowered his voice. Sam leaned in. “I’ve been tryin’ to prove they got language.”   
  
“Language?” Seriously? Sam had known they were bright, but to go as far as saying they could talk?

Bobby shrugged. “They’re smart enough for it. That’s what the microphones are for- I’ve been recording all their vocalisations. It’ll be much easier to convince the government to give them rights if we can communicate, show what’s actually going on in their bird brains, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how. It’s strange, I got so far but then I hit a wall. it’s like I’m only getting half the words or somethin’.” He looked up at Sam, that excitement still clear on his face. “But if you say Gabriel’s been mimicking you? Maybe we can do this the other way ‘round. Maybe we can get them to understand us.”

“But... surely people wouldn’t be keeping them as pets if they were that smart! People wouldn’t be allowed to!”   
  
Bobby waved his hand with a snort, pulling the plug out of the sink. “You treat something like a dumb animal, it becomes a dumb animal. The poor creature the Kardashians just bought won’t be taught a word in its life and everyone will go on thinkin’ angels have got the same level of consciousness as a toy poodle. I’ve never seen ‘em mimic before, but I believe you when you say Gabriel did. He’s an odd creature.”

Sam followed behind Bobby as he picked up a stack of plastic crockery, putting it back in one of the containers. “Do you… do you think we can really change things?”

“I sure do. But we have to make people believe us first. If you get me proof? Then we’re talkin’. Otherwise we’ll be laughed outta the scientific community and more importantly, we’ll be laughed outta court, but you know that.” He turned, pointing a finger at Sam’s chest. “But if you can get me proof that angels can talk, that they’re sentient on some level, I can promise you’ll be the second name on that paper when I publish it. And if you want help in tryin’ to change the law, you’ll have whatever evidence the Angelic Conservation Trust can gather to back you up. I got a whole web of contacts out there, I’ll ask them for help too. But first you gotta get me that proof. Deal?”    
He stuck his hand out. Sam grasped it, shaking it firmly.   
  
“Deal.”


	4. Chapter 4

The next day dawned just as glorious as the day before. Everyone was up early again when Sam poked his head out of the tent, the sun rising into the clear sky as they got ready for the day ahead, chattering as they went about their morning routines. Bobby divvied up their activities for the day while they all sat around the fire pit to eat breakfast.

“Claire and Kevin, you’re on forest sampling.” Kevin groaned loudly over his cereal but Bobby ignored him. “Don’t give me that look Claire, it’s gotta be done. Sam, you’re with Charlie and Jo today- you’ll be doing the angels again. And if Loki shows his smirkin’ face, see if you can get any footage on that,” Bobby passed Sam a camera then stood. “Alright! Let’s go! We got work to do!”

Soon, they were rumbling out along the dirt track towards the meadow. The girls chatted in the front, leaving Sam to watch out of the windows as the trees whipped past. As soon as the truck stopped, Charlie was out and bounding ahead, her auburn hair bouncing as she beckoned them through the grass. “Come on!”

Today, the others let Sam help out with setting up the microphones, although Sam had a sneaking suspicion that he was still more hindrance than help. After they were finished and Charlie had spread out the tarp and settled down on it, Jo was still stood, frowning out at the waving grass. The sun had risen fully into the sky, the light glancing off her hair as she looked around.

“That’s weird. Usually the angels are here by now. Wonder what’s taking them so long?”

Sam put the satellite phone carefully where it couldn’t get dropped into the grass and turned to face her. “Don’t they ever just, not show up?”   
  
Charlie spoke up. “Well, sometimes they don’t come down to the meadow, but usually we’d at least see them flying over or-”

“Sam!”

A voice came from the treeline. They all whipped around.

“Holy shit,” Jo whispered. “Is that…?”

There, on the edge of the trees, was a familiar silhouette. Sam’s breath caught. It was him again!

“Sam!” Gabriel hopped forwards, short flaps of his half-spread wings carrying him out of the shadows of the trees and letting him bound over the tallest patches of grass. Fuck, but it was incredible to watch him in the air, feathers treading the air and adjusting themselves to perfectly balance his weight. Gabriel was mesmerising. He landed just a few meters from where they were all frozen in place, wings ruffling themselves as he eyed Charlie and Jo. Sam gave him a little wave and he perked up, waving back. “Sam?” 

“Sam!?” Charlie hissed, her head whipping around to face him. “What the fuck? He’s  _ saying your name!! _ ”

“I know,” Sam slipped the camera out of its pouch, flicking it on. “He was mimicking me yesterday, he’s crazy good at it. Bobby had a word with me last night, asked me to film it. Hey Gabe,” He stepped forwards. “You remember my name, huh?”

“What the hell…” Sam heard Jo muttering behind him as Gabriel sidled up to him, leaning over and inspecting the camera with a series of curious chirps. He caught sight of his own reflection in the lens and his eyes widened in surprise, his feather-crest rising up through his hair. Sam chuckled. Gabriel danced back with an offended bark at being laughed at, which only made Sam laugh harder. His eyes narrowing, Gabriel made a grab for the camera.

Sam held it up out of reach of his hands. “Woah, woah, okay, okay, I won’t laugh, promise!” 

Gabriel huffed, then folded his wings flat with a shuffle, watching him expectantly. Sam rubbed the back of his neck under the unblinking golden gaze. There was something so intimidating about the angel- a weight to his attention- as though he was taking up far more space than he did. Sam took a deep breath and gave him a small smile.

“Well, you learnt my name, you wanna learn more words? Come on, let’s see...”

He hadn’t really thought about how he was going to do this- he hadn’t even had time to fully figure out how to get the camera to play back, never mind making lesson plans to teach an angel how to speak English. Objects would probably be easiest, right?

“Grass.” He plucked a stem from in front of him, handing it over. Gabriel took it, looking it over for a moment in confusion before understanding seemed to dawn behind his eyes.

“Grrr.... rrrraaaaa...” Gabriel narrowed his eyes in concentration. “Rraaaaaassssssss.”

“That’s right, you’re getting it!”

Sam glanced behind him. Jo and Charlie were watching them, mouths open, absolutely thunderstruck. Sam smiled awkwardly at them.

“Graassss! Grass!”

Gabriel’s words broke off into chitters of self-congratulation. He fluffed up his golden wings and puffed out his chest and looked so pleased with himself that Sam couldn’t help grinning along with him. “Yeah you got it! Shall we do some more? How about tree? Tree.”   
  
“Trrrrr…”

They spent most of the morning like that, Gabriel soaking up word after word like a sponge, moving from objects to verbs with barely a hiccup. He was a shockingly fast learner. Sam had expected him to get bored and wander off after a while, but no, at lunchtime Gabriel was still watching attentively as Sam searched around for words he hadn’t taught the angel yet. Or almost attentively. Somehow, between words, Gabriel managed to steal his sandwiches, and Sam was laughing too hard at his expression when he discovered the pickles to be mad.

The other angels had arrived at mid-morning, flocking around the other two like they had the day before, but leaving a respectful distance around Sam and Gabriel. Sam turned around when he heard giggling to see Charlie having her hair thoroughly groomed by a young angel with a tag reading ANA in her russet wings. Jo was grinning and filming on her phone, but when she noticed that Sam was looking at them she put it away and clambered to her feet with a groan, walking closer.

“How are you getting on? Is he fluent yet?”

“We had a bit of trouble with ‘up’ and ‘down’ but I think he’s got it now-”   


Sam broke off in surprise at the rumbling growl coming from behind him. He turned to find Gabriel watching Jo with narrowed eyes, his wings hunching up to bristle over his head in a threatening display. Suddenly, there was nothing of the playful being that Sam had spent the morning with. In his place there was a powerful creature of legend that could knock them all flat with one beat of his wings.

Jo took a nervous step back. Sam edged between them.

“Woah, okay buddy, she got the message. She’s backing off, right?” He called behind himself.

Jo snorted, backing up even further. “You bet! I’m not coming anywhere near him.”

The grumbling noises died away. Sam turned back to Gabriel, shaking his head disapprovingly as the angel went back to ignoring the other humans and started preening his wings with pointed disinterest. 

“You know you don’t need to do that, right? She’s not a threat. She’s safe.”

Gabriel cocked his head, looking up at him with one eye. “Safe?”   
  
“Yeah, they won’t hurt you. They’re just the same as me.”

But Gabriel’s head shot up at that. He shook his head defiantly, his wings bristling again. “No! No same.” He hopped closer to Sam, right into his personal space like he had the night before, prodding him in the chest. “Sam.”   


Sam nodded. “Yeah, Sam, that’s me.”

“No…” Gabriel gestured in frustration, making chittering noises at the back of his throat. Then he stopped and perked up, like he’d just realized something. He looked up at Sam like he was calculating what his reaction would be, and hopped away. Turning his back, he opened his wings and spread his tail, and for a moment Sam thought he was going to leave. He opened his mouth to call after him, but Gabriel didn’t take off. Instead, he shook his wings like he was shaking off water. All his body feathers fluffed, exposing the bright golden down layer underneath, and his crest rose as he looked at Sam over his shoulder. Then he shook his wings and tail again, making the bright gold of his plumage shimmer in the sun.

Sam just stared at him, confused. What the hell was he doing? 

“Oh my god, Sam,” Jo whispered loudly from behind him. Sam turned and saw that her face was frozen in an expression of disbelieving amusement. Next to her, Charlie was muffling her laughter in her sleeve, the camera aimed in their direction. 

“What? What’s he doing?”

“He’s…” 

Jo trailed off, obviously trying to find the right words, but Charlie burst out with unmistakable glee, “He’s  _ flirting  _ with you!”

“What? He’s…” Sam turned back to look at Gabriel again. Gabriel was peeking at him from under his eyelashes. The angel’s wings gave another shimmering ruffle. “Seriously? Are you sure he’s not just being territorial or someth-”

Gabriel turned around and started strutting towards him, churring, wings rhythmically flashing open and closed in what was unmistakably a display. Behind him, the others burst out into roars of laughter. Gabriel stopped. His wings drooped.

Sam turned, scowling, his hands on his hips. “Hey, don’t laugh at him! He’s just really confused!”

“He’s like, a reverse furry,” Charlie hiccuped as she wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye. “He’s like one of those ostriches that only want to mate with humans!”

Sam felt himself flush, and tried to hide it behind a pout. He turned back to Gabriel, ignoring the chuckles still coming from behind him as he led the angel away. “Ignore them. Come on.” 

When he’d signed up for this he’d never considered an angel might be interested in him in…  _ that _ way. But what did it matter? He thought to himself defiantly. Sam was strictly here to study the angels. And anyway, it wasn’t like Gabriel was hideous- he was easily the handsomest angel in the flock, with his strong arms and broad, bright wings and the sharp, piercing gold of his gaze and miles of summer-tanned skin...

Nope! Nope. He quickly cut off that train of thought. Not going there. 

Gabriel was just confused, right? The rut was coming up, hormones were running high, and the angels were getting ready for the mating season. That’s all this was. 

Gabriel had perked up a little now that Sam’s attention was back on him again. “Sam! Words!”

“Okay, where were we Gabe? Oh yeah.” They’d been doing parts of the body before they’d gotten distracted, hadn’t they? Sam held his hands up in front of him. “Hands! Hands.”   


“Hans! Hand...d… hands!”

“Good, good okay, fingers.”

Gabriel frowned down at his digits in concentration. “Fing… finers. Fin-gers.”

“Good enough. Arm?”

“Arm!”

“Yeah, that one’s easy, huh?” He pointed behind Gabriel’s back to where his wings were folded. “Okay, wing.”

Gabriel turned to look, his wings turning with him. He looked at the empty meadow behind him, then back at Sam, confused. 

“Wing!” Sam pointed again to the other side. Gabriel turned again, his whistle of confusion turning into annoyed chattering when he found nothing there again.

“No, no, I mean,” Sam chuckled. He stepped forwards carefully and poked the arch of one of Gabriel’s wings. The wing flinched away from the unexpected touch and Gabriel whipped around to stare at him in surprise.

Sam touched the wing again, more gently this time, the feathers sleek under his fingertips. “Wing.”

Gabriel hesitated, then slowly extended the limb towards him, feathers fanning out and alula fingers reaching. The small digits wrapped around his finger with a shockingly strong grip. Sam winced as the claws dug into his skin. “Wing?”

“Yeah! Yeah, wing. Well done. Oh, that reminds me!” With his free hand, Sam dug in his pocket, pulling out the tag with GAB emblazoned on it. “I was going to try and stick this on you.”

As soon as he caught sight of the tag, Gabriel’s eyes lit up. He let go of Sam’s hand, peering closer, head cocked on one side in interest. “Wing! On wing!”

“Oh! Yeah! You know what these are, huh?”

Gabriel looked up at him with what was unmistakably a smirk, extending the front edge of his wing like he was daring Sam to try and stick it on. Sam had a feeling that it wasn’t going to be that easy judging by the mischievous grin, but he played along, bending forwards to line up the metal with the place the skin was thinnest.

Sure enough, as soon as he got close, Gabriel whipped his wing away again with a whooping cackle. He hopped away for half a second, then strutted back in, extending the wing on the other side towards him in invitation, eyes gleaming with humour. 

Sam raised an eyebrow at him. Gabriel grinned. The wing flexed tauntingly.

Maintaining eye contact, Sam bent down. As he’d expected, as soon as he got within a centimeter, Gabriel started to pull back, but Sam was ready for him this time- just as he pulled away, Sam lunged forwards and grabbed at him. 

Unfortunately, instead of grabbing hold of the bony wrist joint like he’d meant to, he accidentally caught hold on the leading edge of the wing instead. Just as Jo had told him the night before, the skin along the front of the wing was thin and unsupported- the sleek feathers slipped through his fingers like water, and Gabriel pulled away with a disapproving squawk. Sam staggered a little before righting himself.

“Come on man, I’m not gonna play this game all day. Are you gonna let me stick you with this or not?”

Gabriel looked at him with a mischievous smirk, waggling his wings behind his back.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Guess not.”

But suddenly, Gabriel’s attention wasn’t on him any more. He stood up straight, eyes fixed on the treeline, like he was listening to something. Sam turned, but whatever Gabriel was fixated on, Sam couldn’t see it. 

Suddenly, Gabriel turned to the other angels, who had stopped grooming each other and were watching him anxiously. He gave a short, sharp bark. With a flurry of beating wings, the entire flock took off. Gabriel gave Sam one last fleeting glance, then followed them, leaping into the air. Sam staggered back, shielding his eyes from the dust and downdraughts as the angels disappeared over the trees.

“Huh. Wonder what spooked them?” Jo came up to stand next to him, her hands on her hips. 

“Don’t know.”

“Well, field time over, I guess.” Charlie spoke up behind them, “We got that all on camera at least.”

Jo’s smile was suddenly full of evil. “I can’t wait to see Bobby’s face when we show him the footage of Gabriel displaying at you.”

“What? No! You wouldn’t!”

.o0o.

Gabriel flew in the direction of the distressed calls, his more powerful wings propelling him faster than the rest of the flock could manage.

He was just on time. 

The mother bear took its first swipe at Alfie just as he crested the trees next to the river. Behind them, a pair of cubs bobbed their necks nervously from the treeline. Gabriel was down like a shot, wings folding into a streamlined arrow, barely checking his speed as he swung his feet forward at the very last second to hit the bear solidly in the side.

The bear was knocked nearly off its feet by the blow, but it recovered quickly. It shook its head and turned, loosing an ear-splitting roar in Gabriel’s direction. Gabriel roared back, keeping his wings spread, all his feathers standing upright in aggressive display. He jumped forwards, feigning a lunge, and the bear took a step back, suddenly uncertain. Gabriel bellowed again, then took a deep breath and screeched at the top of his lungs.

The bear balked, turning with a gruff moan and lumbering after her bleating cubs. 

Gabriel made sure she was gone before turning back to Alfie.

_ “Alpha! You came!” _

_ “Of course I came,” _ Gabriel scolded with a cluck of annoyance. He checked him over, eyes narrowing at the awkward way he was holding his left wing.  _ “What were you doing?” _

The rest of the flock had started to arrive. Anna immediately hopping close, looking worried. Naomi and rest hung back, whistling quietly amongst themselves.

_ “Just fishing.”  _ Alfie complained. _ “I didn’t see her, she came up behind me and she batted me on the- Ow!” _ He flinched and danced back, away from Gabriel’s hands stretching out his injured wing, chattering in pain.

_ “Hmm. Looks sprained.” _ Gabriel frowned. It was a bad time of year to have one of their flock injured, even one of the youngsters. They would need to be collecting food in the next few weeks, and the loss of even one member of the flock to injury could risk starvation for the lot of them. 

_ “Maybe, if he hadn’t been chasing that wingless’ tail, alpha would have been here faster,” _ he heard Naomi sniff behind him.

Gabriel whipped around and hissed at her, crest rising and wings spreading. He hopped over to loom above her, his eyes narrowed. Immediately, she relented, dropping to her knees with her wings pressed flat to the ground, even if her lips were pursed reluctantly. Gabriel relented at the submission, folding his wings away.  _ “This has nothing to do with him.” _   


_ “But he’s not one of us!” _ Naomi protested from the ground.  _ “He’s one of them! He’s just a dumb wingless. How can you even think of making that animal part of the flock? How are you even considering mating him?” _

_ “They are not dumb! We were wrong.” _ Gabriel turned to address the rest of the angels as well.  _ “The wingless aren’t as stupid as we thought. They are not animals. They talk in their own strange way, but they understand. I’ve been communicating with the new one. He’s kind, and intelligent, and sharp. I believe he’d make an excellent addition to this flock.” _

Joshua stepped forwards, wings held low to show that he had no intention of challenging Gabriel’s authority.  _ “And what if he doesn’t want to join the flock? What then?” _

_ “Of course he wants to join the flock! Haven’t you seen him? He only pays attention to us, the entire time he’s there. Every time I arrive in the meadow, he moves away from his wingless flockmates and comes towards me. It’s the only explanation. Maybe he doesn’t know how to return the courtship dance?”  _ Gabriel considered suddenly. 

Maybe that was it! Maybe the wingless didn’t dance when they wanted to enter a flock or impress a potential mate? It would certainly explain the mixed signals. He’d been disappointed when the hints he’d been dropping all morning had been ignored, but this put a new spin on things. Maybe that was why he was ignoring all of Gabriel’s very obvious invitations to dance with him... 

Joshua nodded, stepping back. Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the rest of the flock, barking out the words as an alpha command. _ “If any of you have a problem with Sam being a part of this family, then I suggest you find yourselves a new flock!” _

There was a slight shuffling of wings, but apart from that, nobody moved. Gabriel huffed, nodding and turning back to tend to Alfie’s wing. 

_ “If Gabriel gets the tall one, I want the one with the flaming hair,” _ he heard Anna whisper behind him as he snapped a large branch for a splint. He rolled his eyes. Sometimes he wanted to leave this leadership business to someone else, but what could he do? His family needed him. And this time, he would protect them.

.o0o.

It was late that evening, after dinner when Sam was hunched over in the van helping to input the data, before the subject of that day’s footage came up again. 

“Done. Thank fuck,” Jo sighed as she pressed enter on the last line, saving the file and extiting the programme. 

Charlie spun on her chair. “Are you two only just done? Wow you guys are slow!”

Jo pouted as Charlie hopped past her and swung herself out of the trailer. “Not all of us can be tech wizards,” she called after her retreating back.

Bobby ducked his head through the narrow doorway. “Sam! Get out of that cramped trailer boy, I’ve been meaning to talk to you, didn’t manage to catch you at dinner. Did you see Gabriel again today?”

Sam picked up one of the laptops and folded himself carefully out of the trailer, stepping aside to let the others get out after him. “Yeah, Bobby! I’ve got so much footage to show you, wait until you see what I filmed-”

Jo snorted loudly, pushing past them and flopping on one of the logs, where several of the others had already finished their chores and were toasting marshmallows over the fire. Charlie was already half-way through her first s’more.

Bobby crossed his arms, turning to look at her. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” 

“I mean that we were doing most of the filming because Sam over there was too busy with his new buddy.” She teased, glancing back to where they were standing.

“Yeah, fine,” Sam conceded with a grin. “Just wait until you see what  _ Jo and Charlie  _ filmed.”

“Yeah, we had to do all the camerawork because Loki wouldn’t let us come anywhere near him.” Then Jo smirked. “But hey, at least we’ve figured out why Loki lets Sam get up close and personal. He’s got an  _ admirer. _ ”

Everyone looked between them, confused. “What?” Bobby asked, nonplussed. Sam made frantic “stop!” gestures at her from behind their backs.

Charlie giggled and battered her eyelashes. “Loki’s in luuuurve!”

“He was displaying. Wing-flicking and strutting around and everything.” Jo smirked.   


The circle broke out into hoots of laughter. Kevin was cackling so hard he didn’t even notice when his marshmallow dropped off the end of his skewer and landed in the fire. 

Sam felt himself flush bright red. He sat down on the log and scowled at her. “Thanks, Charlie. Seriously.”

“I don’t care how you’re getting the data, Sam. If the only way you can get him to talk is exchanging valentines cards and romantic walks on the beach then go for it. I ain’t gonna judge.” Bobby told him, but there was a distinctly teasing quirk at the corner of his beard. Sam huffed, rolling his eyes, pulling the laptop he’d brought out with him back towards himself and plugging in the camera.

“Do you want to see this footage or not?”

Everybody gathered around. The lingering snickers quickly died away when Sam showed them the film. When it finished, Bobby leaned back, staring at the image on the screen, Gabriel’s glorious wings frozen half-open as he threw himself into flight. “Well. That’s somethin’ alright.”

“That’s incredible!” Lenore breathed. “Who would have thought they were capable of that? It puts a whole new spin on the human-angel co-evolution theory, and the reports of mutualistic relationships with several different societies. If communication is possible…”

The rest of the circle broke away in discussions of various theories in light of Sam’s discoveries, but Sam drew Bobby aside instead, moving slightly away from the fire. “Could I have a look at your data for the vocalisations? Bobby, the way he was picking it up… there’s no way angels don’t have language. You saw him. If he can learn to speak english, surely we can learn the other way around too.”

Bobby shrugged. “You’re welcome to try and translate, but like I said, I’ve been tryin’ to do that for half a decade and I got nothing. But who knows? Maybe you’ll see something I don’t.”

They were quiet for a second. Sam spoke up from his own thoughts. “Is it enough?”   


Bobby looked up at him. “What? To change the law? No. Not yet.”   


“What? Why not? He’s obviously understanding!”

“You see a ban on keeping parrots, boy? Talking ain’t enough. If we want any changes in law, we gotta prove they’re on a level with us.” Bobby patted him on the shoulder, looking him in the eye. “I suspected a long time that they were this intelligent, but in the three days since you’ve arrived I’ve made more progress in proving it than I have in the last five years. I’m finally getting close. Trust me, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’ve been at this for an incredibly short space of time. The rate he seems to be learnin’? He’ll be speaking in sentences by the end of the moth. Patience. We’ll get there.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, real life be wild

The next week was an unusual time for the flock. 

Gabriel spent much more time than he normally would in the meadow. Sam would come and try and teach him words, with his bright smile and his awestruck gaze, and the other wingless would gawp at him and point the false-eye in his direction. They were still nervous about his presence, he could tell- especially the small, dark-haired male. Gabriel had had a lot of fun one afternoon sneaking up on him and then startling him into shrieking, and then chasing him around the clearing, until Sam had put a stop to it- but Sam wasn’t remotely afraid of him any more. Which was good! He didn’t seem to be reacting much to Gabriel’s advances yet, but they could work on that. Sometimes he thought he saw a flicker of interest in his gaze, in the way he held his body, but it was so hard to tell. Mostly his face seemed to go red and his speech would start stuttering endearingly.

Gabriel just had to keep trying, he was sure, and ignore the way the rest of the wingless cackling whenever he started to display. Sam did always bark at them whenever they did that, and Gabriel was counting that as a point in his favour.

Gabriel was aware that trying to woo a wingless into joining the flock wasn’t exactly normal. But then again, normal was never something he’d worried about too much. 

After the initial upset, most of the rest of the flock weren’t concerned about Sam once they'd had time to get used to the idea. It wasn’t in their nature to be suspicious- new flock members were to be welcomed. Even Naomi had settled down after some grumbling. Gabriel was the alpha, after all.

As the week went on and their lessons in the meadow continued, Gabriel found that he was slowly starting to understand, both what Sam was trying to say to him, and what the chattering of the rest of the wingless meant. Communication was getting easier. Already he was starting to be able to construct short sentences. The only thing holding him back now was his frustratingly limited vocabulary, but that was a problem he could take on, and he threw himself eagerly into learning. Hopefully, by the time that the rut arrived, Sam might understand him, too.

But autumn was fast approaching, and the nice weather couldn’t last forever. 

The rain had arrived. 

A grey dawn saw the flock huddled in the branches of a particularly dense spruce in a fruitless attempt to keep the water off. In the open, the rain came down in pelting sheets, great heavy droplets that would have soaked them through in a matter of seconds. The rain was lighter under the trees, but despite the shelter, the mood was still morose. The preen oil coating their feathers might have been enough to keep them from getting too waterlogged, but the endless downpour was enough for some to start seeping through. Wings flicked occasionally, but apart from that, they all looked like lumps of sodden feather squatting on the branches. Anna sneezed violently and almost fell off her perch.

Gabriel looked around at them glumly. Well, there wasn’t much point staying here and getting wet. He’d wanted to see Sam anyway- there was something very specific he’d wanted to go over today.

Gabriel shook himself off, droplets flicking off his feathers, and took off through the downpour with heavy wingbeats. The others looked up to watch him go.

Somehow, the rain got even heavier as he flew. He squinted, flicking his second eyelids across his eyes to clear the water from his vision, and found himself coasting over the pointed hummocks of the wingless’ camp. He circled a few times, then dropped down into the small meadow behind it. He felt a little exposed out here, without the protection of the flock or the cover of the trees, but he reminded himself that there was a future member of his flock here with him. Hopefully.

“Saaaaam!” He called towards the hummocks. “SAAAAAM!”

A head poked out of the nearest one, and Gabriel chirped, perking up. He was in! The head retreated back inside, and for a moment Gabriel was afraid that Sam wasn’t going to come out again, but a half-second later he folded his long limbs out of the front-flap, pulling on an extra false-skin as he went. He half jogged towards where Gabriel was stood, with his wings arched over his head to repel the rain.

“Jesus, Gabe, you’re soaking! What the hell are you doing out here, man?”

“Sam! Talk, words, Sam! Teach.”

“Seriously? Today?” Sam sounded skeptical, and even if Gabriel couldn’t understand every word yet, he got the gist from the hunch of his shoulders. “Come on, could this not have waited until tomorrow? We’re gonna get drenched.”  
  
As though the sky gods had heard him, the heavens opened, the rain pelting down even harder. Gabriel chittered in irritation, hopping away from Sam and bounding towards the trees, shaking the excess water off once he was under the protection of the canopy.

Sam followed after him. “Okay, what did you want me to teach you?”  
  
“No! Not Sam teach Gabriel. Gabriel teach Sam.” Gabriel punctuated it by pointing at him, trying to make it obvious what he meant. Sam’s eyebrows rose in surprise, or maybe in excitement, Gabriel wasn’t sure. Damn the wingless’ lack of expression. If only Sam had wings, Gabriel would be able to tell what he was feeling so much easier!

“Oh! Yeah! Yeah, okay. What do you want to teach me?”  
  
Gabriel had been considering this ever since he had discovered that the wingless were intelligent. He had so many things he wanted to teach Sam! Like how to properly preen a wing, and how to warm an egg… but those would have to come when he accepted Gabriel’s proposal to join the flock, as Gabriel was convinced he would. 

Better start small. 

Gabriel reached forwards and tapped Sam on the chest. “Sam.” He raised an eyebrow in question. 

“Yes, Sam, that’s me.”

Gabriel nodded, then pointed to himself and whistled his name. His real name, not the one that the humans had given him. Sam looked confused. Gabriel whistled it again, pointing to himself more emphatically.

“That’s… Oh! That’s your name? Your name in your language. You want me to try?”  
  
Gabriel perked up, nodding at him enthusiastically. Yes! He was getting it! Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all.

Sam opened his mouth, inhaled. Gabriel leaned forwards in anticipation.

But all that came out of Sam's lips was a pathetic little squeak.

"Did I get it?

Gabriel frowned. Even a new-hatched chick could have done better than that!

Sam sighed, his shoulders slumping. "That bad?" Gabriel's grimace apparently spoke for itself. "Okay, let me try. Would you say it again for me?"

Gabriel repeated his name, stressing the sounds, the shrill call and the lower hoot. Sam tried again, his forehead wrinkled up in concentration, but again, nothing better than peeping. 

They kept at it for fifteen minutes, both of them getting more and more frustrated and disappointed with each failed attempt. Sam wasn’t getting any better. Why wasn’t he getting it? Gabriel had put effort into learning his language, why couldn’t Sam put in the effort to learn Gabriel’s! It was like he wasn’t even _trying_ to do it right. 

Well, if that’s what this was, then Gabriel wasn’t going to stick around. He shook his head. Maybe he’d made a mistake in thinking a wingless could ever be one of his flock... He spread his wings.

“Wait! Gabriel, wait-”

Sam’s eyes were wide and dismayed. He grabbed Gabriel’s hand, tethering him to earth, and Gabriel fought back the instinct to beat his wings until he was released. 

The wingless’ grip was warm and firm and damp from the rain. Keeping eye contact, Sam pulled Gabriel’s hand forwards until it was wrapped around his own throat. Gabriel frowned. What was he doing? Was this some strange way of showing that he knew who was alpha? That wasn’t the issue here, this was about-

“See?” Sam asked.

And his throat vibrated unexpectedly under Gabriel’s palm.

Surprised, Gabriel whipped his hand back, wrenching it out of Sam’s grasp. What in the Skyfather’s realm had that been? 

He pressed his hand back against the wingless’ throat, just in case he’d been mistaken. Sounds weren’t meant to vibrate there! Sounds came from in your chest, every hatchling knew that! Sam grinned at him hopefully and started babbling words that Gabriel didn’t know yet, his throat buzzing against his palm.

“Yeah, it’s a human thing. I’ve got a larynx at the top of my throat where I make sounds, which means I can only make one sound at once, whereas you have a syrinx right where your trachea splits in two so you can make two sounds simultaneously. So I’ll never be able to copy- oh!” Gabriel tugged again at the fake fur covering Sam’s top half, getting impatient. “Hey, careful, you’ll rip it, let me-”

Sam did something dexterous with his fingers and the fake-fur split down the font. He shrugged it off is shoulders, then pulled the layer underneath that up and over his head, shivering slightly as droplets hit his bare skin from the trees above. Gabriel pressed his palm to Sam’s chest as he kept talking, concentrating.

“Yeah, that’s what I mean, my voice doesn’t come from there. I don’t have air sacks like you do either, the way we breathe is completely different, your lungs are way more efficient than mine, it’s really fascinating…”

Gabriel strained to feel something, anything as Sam babbled away. But there was nothing. His chest rose and fell with each breath, but it was silent.

Sam must have seen his disturbed expression, “Okay, how do I explain this how you’ll understand-” he stopped, locking eyes with Gabriel and pointing at his own throat. “One.”

Gabriel nodded impatiently. He opened his mouth and made a single toned call. 

“Yeah exactly! Now you’re getting it-” Sam chattered excitedly, then pointed to Gabriel’s chest, the tip of one finger tapping him twice just under his clavicle. “One, two.”

Gabriel made a double toned call, both notes ringing in harmony.

Sam grinned at him, his whole face lighting up in that way Gabriel was getting addicted to. “Yes! Exactly! You’ve got it!”

Gabriel frowned to himself. He thought he understood. His language was not physically possible for Sam to copy. All this time, they’d been trying to talk to the wingless, but the wingless hadn’t been _ able _to talk back! 

“Hold on, I think I’ve got a mixing app… Thank god for waterproof cases...”

Sam pulled a light-stone from his pocket, similar to the ones that Gabriel had seen the other humans use. He jabbed at it a few times, then held it up to his face and made a high, familiar call- _ “Gabe!” _ He pressed it again, and then held it to his face again, making a low call- _ “Rrriel” _. He pressed the stone, tapping against the shining surface and making the patterns jump and change and merge, and then held it out, offering it to him. At first, Gabriel thought he was meant to take it. He reached forwards hesitantly.

But then, the stone… chirped.

“_ Gabrrriel _!”

Gabriel gaped down at it. The stone had _ said his name _. Gabriel felt his crest rise in shock, his wings spreading in involuntary surprise. It was a little garbled, but unmistakable, his name said in Sam’s voice.

Sam leaned forwards, grinning, pressed the button again, and again the stone spoke. “_ Gabrrriel! _” 

Gabriel crowed in triumph. Sam laughed, sweeping his damp hair out of his eyes. “Yeah! Did I get it right?”

Gabriel beamed at him. Oh, Gabriel knew he had made the right choice! His new mate was so clever! He might have the body of a wingless, but he had the soul of an angel, he’d known from the moment he’d seen him, and now he had the proof. Gabriel couldn’t stop himself from trilling, wings flicking in display. As ever, Sam didn’t seem to understand, he just laughed, but Gabriel suddenly _needed_ him to understand what Gabriel felt in his keel-bone.

Gabriel cleared his throat and placed one hand deliberately over his own chest, right over his heart. “One.” 

Sam stopped laughing, watching him curiously. He raised his hand, Sam’s eyes following it, to press it against the warm, rain-damp skin of Sam’s bare chest, right over where his heart thumped heavily against his ribs. “One.”

Sam’s eyes lifted to his, and there was a strange expression in their multicoloured depths. Like he was in shock, and maybe a little afraid, and a little in awe. He didn’t say anything, but he brought his hand up, placing it over Gabriel’s.

“I swear, I’m going to find a way to help. I’m going to find a way to stop them from taking your people, Gabriel, I promise.”

.o0o.

By evening, the rain had passed, leaving the air fresh and the smell of wet earth heavy over the camp. Above Sam, the sky was a delicate pink-streaked pale blue, while the dark bellies of the clouds had retreated to crouch over the mountains. The other campers were slowly emerging from their tents, stretching and chatting, but he sat alone in the centre of the camp, mug cradled in his hands, deep in thought. 

That last encounter with Gabriel had left him shaken. Had made him start to reconsider his outlook on the things he'd come here taking for granted. He and Gabriel might be different species, but how different were they really? Where did being an animal stop and being a person start? And if Gabriel was a _person_, and he'd been flirting deliberately with Sam all this time...

He jumped when Charlie sat down abruptly next to him, cursing as the hot drink spilled all over his hands.

“Eyy, Sam! It’s nice to know there’s at least one other nerd in camp.”

Sam tried to brush the liquid off his clothes and only succeeded in getting it to soak in further. “Nerd? What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you know? Lenore’s giving a lecture this evening! Oh, you weren’t at lunch, were you? They announced it then.” She looked a little disappointed, like she was half expecting him to get up and wander off.

Sam shrugged. “I’ll stay.”  
  
Her eyes lit up again. “Neat! Jo and Claire are too cool for school, apparently, and Kevin’s stuck on the phone with his mom, so it’s just us.”

They chatted for a few minutes- apparently Charlie was obsessed with Moondoor, just like his brother- before Lenore showed up, lugging a portable screen and a projector. She dumped them down, out of breath. “Whew! I’m getting too old for this. Are you two going to help me set up over here or what?”

Soon, their makeshift lecture theatre was ready. Bobby wandered over, as did Ash, Missouri and Garth, and Jo unexpectedly dropped onto the bench beside them. Sam and Charlie watched, fresh mugs of steaming cocoa in hand, as everyone settled down and Lenore flicked the key on the laptop to begin the presentation.

“Good evening everyone! Tonight I thought we'd mix it up a little, so you get me talking in your ears for the next hour. I'll be taking questions at the end. So; the reasons behind the population decline of angels, and possible preservation techniques.”  
  
She clicked the slides again, bringing up a map. “Although angels might superficially appear to resemble humans, genetically, we are completely separate species. New fossil evidence suggests that the first proto-angelids evolved long before mankind, around one hundred and thirty million years ago. Historically it was a highly successful family, with species scattered across the globe, but as we move into the Anthropocene their luck has changed.”

She clicked to a new slide, a map showing the contrasting range maps. “Angels, specifically _ Angelica Celestii _ , were once found across North America but are now restricted to a few remote, usually mountainous locations. In Europe, their cousins the Gargoyles were hunted to extinction by the thirteenth century. Harpies now cling on only in badly fragmented island communities in the Mediterranien. Gamayun are still being hunted in Russia. Tengus are now protected in Japan.” 

She clicked through several slides of pictures. “With the help of our native american partners, we’ve been able to establish several large areas of habitat which are protected from development, most of which are on reservations. Several tribes have been involved with the efforts. Without their help, it’s likely that north american angels would be extinct already. But through our partnership we’re hoping to do more to actively conserve them.”

Lenore “There’s been a few attempts down the years at captive breeding programmes and re-introductions. The Tengus have been the most successful. The Japanese government has set up a series of large, fenced reserves where the Tengus are encouraged to roost and their health is monitored. Outside of this, there are zones with restricted access, where the Tengus can forage. It’s a form of semi-captivity that seems to have worked very well. Tengus don’t face the same threats as North American angelids do- they’re the least persecuted in their wild range, and also make less appealing pets as they’re more aggressive. However, it’s a good enough example of how a partially wild, partially captive population could function, and one we’re hoping to replicate with the group of angels we’re currently studying here.”

Wait. That they were going to _ replicate _!?

“What!? No!” 

Sam jumped up from the bench, breaking the calm atmosphere. He ignored the rest of the circle staring at him, frowning at Lenore. “I thought the whole point of what we were doing here was to keep them in the wild and out of captivity!”

“Sam…” Lenore sighed and closed her eyes. “Of course that’s what we want. Of course we want them to be able to stay in the wild.” 

“Then why would you ever want to keep them captive?”

Gabriel’s face from that afternoon flashed in his mind, that warm hand pressed against his heart. Telling Sam in the only way he knew how that they were the same, that angels were _ people _. 

Lenore raised an eyebrow at him. “What you’re imagining is probably Victorian zoos, yes? Tiny cages, wings clipped, feathers plucked, rolling around in their own faeces. It wouldn’t be like that. The research here isn’t just about finding out about the wild population. It’s also about discovering exactly what they need so we can replicate that. It's not an ideal situation, but if we're going to do it, we're going to make it the best it can possibly be. And if taking them into semi-captivity is what we have to do to keep them safe and maintain a wild-type population? Then that’s what we’ll have to do.”

Sam just pursed his lips, looking around the circle. But the others all looked away, avoiding his eyes, their expressions just as tired as Lenore’s. Surely they couldn’t agree? Surely there had to be another way? 

Lenore held up a hand, stalling the words threatening to flood out of him. “Sam. I know. I _ know _. Trust me. But let me explain.”

Sam closed his mouth and nodded, tamping down his anger.

Lenore stood from her chair with a sigh, going to stare into the fire with her arms crossed. “This group, the one we’re studying, is one of only three wild flocks near the west coast. You’ve read about how fast they’re vanishing- entire groups are being taken, the poaching for the wildlife trade is a massive problem. Angelids are long lived and slow breeding as a species. They can easily reach a hundred and twenty years old, but they don’t mature and produce chicks until they’re forty. If older members are killed, then younger and less experienced flock members become alphas before they’re ready, and their entire social system is thrown off balance, which has knock-on effects on overall flock survival and the number of chicks who make it to adulthood. Add to that climate change, urbanisation, an ever-shrinking gene pool and pressure from habitat loss and fragmentation…” She shook her head. “It’s not looking good, Sam. We have to plan for the worst case scenario.”  
  
“We’ve founded a sanctuary. The society purchased the land, and we’ve spent the last year and a bit making it secure. The angels would be living much as they do here, just… better protected. It’s thirty square miles of remote habitat protected by electrified fencing, with a station for monitoring cameras. We’re just putting the finishing touches on it, but once we’ve got the data of what they need for the breeding season, and how exactly they overwinter, then we’ll know we’ve got everything they need.”

“But how can captivity ever be better? How can it ever be a better option?” Sam insisted. 

“Sam, I really, honestly hope it doesn’t come to it. I hope we never have to use the sanctuary. But we need to be realistic. And trust me when I say that nobody knows how real these threats are like I do.” Lenore sucked in a shaking breath. “Because it happened to the last flock I tried to study.”

Sam swallowed. The rest of the circle were still and silent, eyes flicking between them. Lenore closed her eyes and blew out her breath. 

“They were special, my first flock. They were unusual in having two alphas instead of one, a pair of twins that we called Michael and Lucifer. We called him that because he kept vandalising our study vehicles. He loved picking out the window-putty and if he ever caught sight of his reflection in the panels, oh boy.” One side of her mouth twitched in remembered humour, her eyes far away. “They had one other half-sibling- Gabriel.”

She must have seen his eyebrows rise in surprise, because she laughed. “Yes, that Gabriel. He’d been Michael and Lucifer’s nestmate. He was still a beta then. He always was an odd angel. But apart from him they were all so friendly, so trusting. They let us get up close and study their feeding habits and their life history. We got so much data- that flock was where we watched the communal breeding in action, the way the whole group would raise the youngsters. We never did manage to find the nest- nobody ever has- but once they got big enough to leave we could watch them. Gabriel in particular adored his half-nieces and nephews. Spent days and days teaching them to fly and hunt and forage. And then...” 

She looked Sam in the eye, and he could see her pain. “They came in the night. We woke up one morning and it was all over- the betas and the chicks were gone. Poached. Michael was dead already, and the bastards had ripped his wings off, probably to hang on their wall as sick trophies. Lucifer was… we had to put him down ourselves. There was nothing we could have done. He was so obviously in agony, but he wouldn’t let us near Michael, even at the end. The betrayal in his eyes as I aimed the gun at his head... I’ll never forget it. I don’t think I’ll ever quite forgive myself.

“I grieved. I went back to my books for a long time. And then, years later, I hear about a project, a new research project around a flock of angels. I arrive in the field and who do I see? Gabriel, an alpha now, just like his brothers. And then I knew I would do whatever it took. Whatever it takes to never let that happen again.”

Sam’s throat was tight. He could imagine only too well what that sort of scene would be like- the pictures of Dean’s case file flashed in front of his eyes again. He understood now.

Lenore went to sit back down, looking a thousand years older than when she’d started. “I hope that one day, we can build a world where humans and angels can live side-by-side, without any need for fences or protective measures. But until then? We have to preserve what we can.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait, but I thought this thing was finished, and it's decided that what it needs is yet more plot. I'm not in charge of this whole writing charade anymore. The fic has declared independence.

There was something wrong in the flock.

Gabriel shifted restlessly on his perch. What could it be? There had been no fights or scuffles as far as he was aware. Their territory was safe. Even the rain had subsided to a light drizzle after the torrential downpours of the previous day, thank the heavens, so they weren’t having a problem foraging.

But still, there was something not right. He could sense it. It was an alpha thing- there was a resonance around each and every member of his flock, a frequency that connected them all into a whole. And he’d learnt that no matter how far apart they were, he could always tell if they were hurt or in trouble.

His gut had never been wrong. 

He scanned his flock foraging peacefully down below. Everyone seemed to be there, picking their way through the ferns looking for edible plants or mushrooms. Everyone except…

Alfie. Gabriel’s sharp eyes finally spotted him, listlessly foraging far from the others, his faun wings tight against his back. He had been withdrawn the last few days. Quiet where he was usually boisterous, sitting hunched at the back of the group. Hmm. 

Gabriel pitched himself off the bough, gliding down towards the forest floor on silent wings.

_ “Hey, kid.” _   


Alfie jumped, letting out a little squeak as Gabriel landed with a loud THUMP beside him. The young angel turned to face him, wings still folded tight, his feathers fluffed up in surprise.  _ “Gabriel! You scared me.” _

Gabriel patted him on the shoulder, watching closely. _ “Lookin’ kinda lonely down here. Anything you want to tell me?” _

Alfie shook his head, then flinched when Gabriel intentionally bumped him with his wing. There it was.  _ “Ow! I’m fine!” _

_ “Suuure you are.” _

Alfie squawked and hissed, trying to bat him away as Gabriel prodded at his shoulder.

_ “ _ _ Stay still!” _ Gabriel frowned as he inspected it, finding nothing wrong. What could it be if it wasn’t the shoulder?  _ “That sprain should be better by now.”  _ He noticed Alfie holding his arm awkwardly away from his body and his eyes narrowed. _ “Alfie. What’s wrong with your side?” _

Alfie froze for a second. Then, to Gabriel’s surprise, he bolted. 

Gabriel caught up with him in two bounds, tackling him into the ferns.  _ “Alfie! You tell me what’s wrong right now!” _ But Alfie kept wriggling, trying to get away.

Gabriel growled, a deep double-timbre bass sound. The rest of the flock all whipped around, staring at them in alarm. Alfie stopped fighting back immediately, his lip wobbling like a fledgling. Gabriel leaned forwards and brushed back the feathers hiding his ribcage under his wing. 

Gabriel sucked in a sharp breath. The bear’s claws had caught Alfie a glancing blow, raking along the sides of his ribs, pulling out three lines of feathers from the tender skin. The wounds hadn’t been deep. With a little ointment, they should have healed fine by now. But the skin around the crusted scars was hot and reddened and tight, the scabs oozing with infection. Gabriel cursed to himself. He let the feathers fall back over the wound.

_ “You stupid fledgling! You hid this from us! Why?” _

_ “It was just a little scratch!”  _ Alfie defended himself, and now that Gabriel was paying attention like he should have been all along he could see the sweaty pallor of his skin, the slight glassy sheen of his eyes. Sickness.  _ “And I… I didn’t want you to worry! There was so much going on! There’s the rut coming up, and you’re courting, and-” _

Gabriel cut him off with a chatter.  _ “Listen to me. Nothing is more important than flock. Nothing. Hannah?” _

Hannah darted forwards, and Gabriel moved out of the way to let their healer work. She gasped as she first caught sight of the wounds, trilling with alarm, then did the rest of the inspection in worried silence. She placed her palm on Alfie’s head and frowned. She glanced back at Gabriel, her expression grim.

_ “He’s too hot. The infection’s deep and far along. I know medicine, and I can control the pain for now, but this… this might be too far along for me to treat.” _

Alfie whimpered.

Gabriel closed his eyes for a second and clenched his jaw tight enough that his teeth hurt. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. Life had been so much easier when he’d been alone- nobody else to worry about, only himself to care for. He hadn’t meant to become the alpha. But he’d found this other little group of outcasts and without realising it, he’d become attached, and suddenly he was caretaker to them all. What if Alfie died on his watch? He couldn’t lose anyone else. But what could he do when their healer couldn’t do anything? He couldn’t bear it…

And then, suddenly, a thought came to him.

_ “There’s one person who might be able to help us.” _

.o0o.

In camp, the mood was still subdued after the heavy conversation of the night before. Breakfast was quiet and awkward, everyone keeping their eyes on their food, only the clinking of cutlery of plates and the occasional murmur of conversation.

Sam was clearing his dishes when Jo approached him. He glanced up at her as she came over. Her face was drawn tight, a worried frown between her eyebrows. 

“Hey, Sam. We’ve noticed that one of the angels is missing. Alfie. Have you seen him?”

“Alfie.” Sam thought, casting his mind back. “The young angel? Light brown wings?”

“Yeah. We thought, you’ve probably been spending the most time with the flock, maybe you’d seen him...?” 

Her face fell as he shook his head. 

“No, sorry. I haven’t seen him in a week.”

“That’s what I was worried about.” She sighed. “He might look like he’s full-grown, but he’s still the baby of the group. And angels are incredibly social creatures. If they’re not with the flock, that’s never a good sign, and every angel lost is a blow to the wild population at this point. They can’t afford to be losing flock members.” She took a deep breath and drew herself up. “Well, there’s not much we can do unless he reappears. Let me know if you see him, will you? And let Lenore know as well, she won’t say it but she’s worried sick.”

“Of course. See you tonight.”

Sam watched her walk away. He’d been spending so much time with Gabriel that he hadn’t even realised that one of the other angels was gone. God, he hoped that he hadn’t caused this by indirectly taking up too much of Gabriel’s time...

But before he could mull over it too much, he was called over. The fieldwork still needed to be done. 

Sam had been placed on the forest surveys team. Kevin groaned next to him when he saw it on their timetable- forest surveys apparently had the reputation of being tedious and time-consuming- but Sam didn’t mind. He thought he might need some time alone with his thoughts today anyway, after his conversation with Gabriel and the heavy discussion of the night before. 

Once they arrived at the site they were sampling, Garth handed them each a clipboard and a measuring tape, usual cheerful grin in place.

“You’ve been shown how to do the transects, huh?” He asked Sam, who nodded. “Great stuff! Remember, wheel out the tape measure for twenty meters, note all the tree species within a meter of the tape, record it on the sheet. Make sure to be far enough apart, but don’t get lost!” He climbed back into the truck, folding his gangly limbs into the driver’s seat. “See y’both in two hours!”

They both watched him peel away, clouds of dust blooming up behind the tires which hung on the air until he was out of sight.

“Guess we’d better do this then,” Kevin muttered moodily.

They both started unwinding their measuring tapes, moving away from each other by unspoken agreement.

After half an hour, Sam concluded that Kevin had been right. Doing woodland transects was dull as shit.

He found his mind wandering, only half paying attention to the trees, mostly lost in his own thoughts. As much as the plans for the sanctuary worried him, he kept getting distracted by the memories of Gabriel's posturing in front of him, the excited chirps every time he saw him. Up until now Sam had been trying to ignore the blatant invitations as much as he could. Because yeah, it was mating behaviour, but for it to be _flirting_ it had to have intent and awareness behind it.

_But,_ said a sly little voice whispered at the back of his head, _Gabriel is a person now, isn't he? A very attractive person. Who's obviously interested in you. A__nd you're curious, even if you don't want to admit it to yourself... you want him, so why not-_

Sam frowned to himself and wrenched his mind away, scribbling another tree down on the sheet. No. No, he couldn't. It was wrong. They were different species! God, he needed to get laid. He'd join the others the next time they went on a supplies run to town, blow off some steam. Yeah, that was a good plan, that's what he'd do-

The sound of heavy wingbeats cut through his concentration. Sam whirled, just as Gabriel dropped through the canopy to land next to him, shaking leaves out of his feathers. 

“Sam!”

Shaking off his previous thoughts, Sam managed to smile at him. “Hey, Gabe.”

Gabriel beckoned to him. There was none of the usual sense of humour in his expression. “Come!”

Sam hesitated, unsure. Something was different. Gabriel seemed upset. But then Gabriel beckoned him again, more impatiently. “Come!” He hopped a few more steps, then took off again, hopping upwards through the branches above them. 

For a moment, Sam thought that was it, that Gabriel was going to fly off and leave him there, but he perched in the upper boughs of a giant spruce a little way north and started whistling impatiently. 

Sam turned and try to look for Kevin, to let him know where he was going, but he was too far away- he couldn’t even hear him rustling through the trees. 

Never mind. Sam turned and followed after Gabriel, wading through the undergrowth. He reached the bottom of the spruce, and looked up just in time to see Gabe take off again, gliding to the next tree in and chattering urgently on the branches over his head.

Sam kept following. He could hear Gabriel’s impatience as he bashed his way through the thick undergrowth, but the angel waited for him, leading him on until he emerged from the trees and staggered into a small clearing.

Gabriel was waiting for him, pacing, his wings held high and half-open in agitation. And next to him was-

“Alfie! Thank god, Lenore and Jo are gonna be so relieved- Gabe, what’s wrong?”

“Sam help!”

Gabriel was chattering at Alfie, shooing him forwards with little movements of his hands and wings. Alfie seemed uncharacteristically shy. Usually he was the first angel to approach humans when they were in the meadow, always getting in their space and trying to groom them, but now he was hanging back, his movements reluctant. Sam knelt down so he wasn’t towering over the shorter angel. Gabriel seemed to be trying to convince Alfie now, his trills and coos turning coaxing, pointing at Sam. Alfie looked towards him, doubtful.

Sam spread his hands. “It’s okay, Alfie. I won’t hurt you, promise.”

Alfie still looked reluctant, but Gabriel rolled his eyes and shoved him forwards, losing patience. Alfie stumbled and Sam caught his arm, frowning slightly as their skin touched. Angels weren’t always this clammy, were they?

Gabriel pointed firmly at Alfie’s side. “Sam. Help. Need help.”

Alfie cautiously raised his wing so he could see. Sam carefully parted the feathers.

“Oh. Oh  _ shit.” _

He stared for a second at the infected wound, the lines of inflamed red tracking towards Alfie’s armpit. His mind whirled over what to do. He looked up at Gabriel’s worried face. “You’re right. We need help. Come with me.”

…

“Where’s Missouri? Has anyone seen Missouri?” 

Gabriel halted on the outskirts of the wingless camp. It would have been faster to fly but Alfie was getting weaker, and Gabriel couldn’t carry him and Sam. Sam had beckoned them urgently to follow him once he had seen the wound, leading them back to his camp.  _ That was a good thing, right? _ Gabriel had thought to himself as Sam crashed through the undergrowth ahead like a spooked moose. If there was no hope, Sam wouldn’t be so eager. He tried to halt the dread coiling in his stomach with limited success. 

But when Sam reached the camp, Gabriel hesitated. The smells were so different- the sharp punch of fire-smoke, something cooking, the mammalian musk of the wingless rubbed everywhere. There might not have been any scent of aggression, but this was not his territory, and just the scent-memories of the wingless were enough to put him on edge. Curious faces peeked out from behind the fabric-mounds. He bared his teeth at them.

_ “Will I be alright?” _ Alfie asked in a small voice.

Gabriel threw a glance over his shoulder to where Alfie was clinging to his back like a hatchling.  _ “You’ll be fine, kiddo, don’t worry.” _

Sam appeared from between the fabric hummocks, hurrying towards them, and Gabriel let out a breath of relief. “They’re over here, see?”

He was talking to two older wingless who were following behind him. They both stopped, surprised, when they caught sight of them. 

“Goodness! I didn’t quite believe you. They’ve never come near the camp before,” the shorter wingless with the rich brown skin said, her voice hushed. She set down her bright red backpack, peering around Gabriel, trying to get a better look at Alfie. She must be their healer.

The taller, paler wingless turned to Sam. There was something… oddly familiar about her, but Gabriel couldn’t quite place her. “Can you get them to come closer?”

“He can understand you know. Come on, Gabe, they’re safe.”

Hoisting Alfie a little higher onto his shoulders, Gabriel walked towards them, not taking his eyes off the two new wingless until he stopped a few feet away. He reluctantly let Alfie down off his back.

“Hello, little fella! Will you let me look?” The healer reached out, and Alfie took her hand, letting her draw him closer and inspect his wound. “Oh, you poor thing. Here, Lenore, open that first aid kit would you? I’ll need to drain this and he’ll need antibiotics. There’s anaesthetics in the first pouch.”

Gabriel watched them like a hawk as they worked. A lot of it seemed similar to what Hannah would have done- the long pointy thing that made Alfie yelp was different, but the wound was drained in the same way, and the cream that the wingless slathered on smelled similar to the herbs that Hannah might have used.

Sam edged closer to him. “What happened?” 

Gabriel pulled his eyes away from the woman wrapping strips of white coverings around Alfie’s injured side and imitated a gruff roar. The other wingless woman jumped at the sound, but Sam just nodded.

“Right, a bear.”

Gabriel filed the word away and inclined his head.

The healer sat back and started packing up. “Okay, done. He’ll need a week’s course of antibiotics but we can get them into him easy enough. He should be fine. I’ll go check the inventory, see if we need to order any more, just in case.”

Gabriel closed his eyes in relief. Alfie was going to be okay.

“Thanks, Missouri. We were worried it was the poachers,” the familiar wingless said, her eyes flicking sideways to look at Gabriel with an odd expression, “at least we can do something about this.” She sighed, sweeping her hair back from her face with one hand so he could see her full profile.

And suddenly, in a blinding snap of realisation, Gabriel knew where he knew her from. 

Gabriel darted forwards, snatching Alfie’s arm and backing away, dragging them both away from the wingless. He could hear himself growling. They had to run. They had to go,  _ now. _

Memories were flashing through his mind like lightning strikes; the woman with her hair tied back in a ponytail, laughing with the other wingless as they watched them forage. The mammalian scent of the wingless mixing with warm grass and dirt as taught little Castiel how to fly, his wings still fluffy with down, squealing with glee as Gabriel tossed him into the air. The warm nights spent dozing in their nest, the rest of the flock close around him. Then the shouts in the dark. The sharp cracks in the dead of night, Michael’s roar cut off abruptly into silence, Castiel’s screams as Gabriel chased desperately after the trucks, but they were too fast, the smell of sulphur and terror and violence and the  _ blood _ , all the  _ blood-  _

_ “Gabriel? Alpha?” _

“Gabe? What’s wrong?” Sam was frowning at him in concern, but Gabriel couldn’t take his eyes off the woman. If she had followed him here, then the Others could as well. His stomach swooped with dread; what if the territory wasn’t safe? What if the Others were here already? He’d left his flock!

Gabriel screwed his eyes shut. He concentrated on his flock bond harder than he ever had before. There they all were, warm specks glowing on the edges of his awareness.

Safe. They were safe. For now.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. Sam was in front of him, one hand stretched out towards him, the other cast behind him, telling the others to stay back. The woman from before was peering over his shoulder, looking stricken.

“Bad!” He spat at her. “Bad! Danger. Not safe.”

“Gabe, they’re not gonna hurt-”

“Sam, no. It’s alright. He’s right.” The wingless woman interrupted him, putting a hand on his shoulder and pulling him back. “He has no reason to trust me, or any of us, after what happened last time.”

Sam turned to face her. “Well we need him to trust us. Especially if you want to pull off your… plan. Maybe he would if we told him what was going on.”

The woman looked up at him sharply. “You think he’ll understand if we explain about the sanctuary? His understanding is that good?”

Sam crossed his arms, suddenly bristling with irritation. “I showed you all that footage of him having full conversations with me. What do you think?”

Gabriel’s eyes darted from one to the other. 

The woman stared at Sam for a second, then her eyes dropped, cowed. “Of course. How shall I explain… maybe a visual aid?”

“Probably a good idea.” Sam pulled out a pencil and a piece of white drawing-bark from his backpack, beckoning Gabriel towards them. “Gabe? Can we talk to you about something?”

Gabriel briefly rested a hand on Alfie’s shoulder to tell him to stay put, then stepped forwards. He tilted his head and quirked a questioning eyebrow at Sam. Sam nodded, starting to draw, the paper tilted so they could all see.

“Okay, this is you.” Sam drew a stick figure that, if Gabriel was being very very generous, could pass for an angel. And then another, smaller one. Around the winged figures, with quick scribbles, Sam drew mountains in profile, and what could be trees if Gabriel squinted enough. “That’s your territory.”

Gabriel nodded impatiently. “Mine. Flock.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Sam drew another figure, next to the angels, this one without wings. “Me. Sam.”

Despite the situation, it made something in Gabriel glow excitedly to see Sam put himself there, with them. _Not the time, Gabriel._ But Sam kept drawing. There was the wingless camp, and beyond it, out in the white expanse where the trees and mountains didn’t extend… Sam drew more wingless figures. Only these didn’t have smiles drawn on their faces. These had teeth bared into snarls, brows low and threatening. The Others. Stick-figure hands grasping things that were long and thin, a handle and a trigger at one end, and he recognised those. Gabriel could practically smell the bitter, acrid stench of those lightning sticks. He felt his hackle feathers rise across his shoulders.

And then, to his alarm, Sam drew an arrow right from the Others right into the middle of his depiction of Gabriel’s territory.

Gabriel reared back. “Coming!? Here?”

“No, no!” Sam held up his hands. “It’s fine, Gabe. They’re not here now. But in the future? Maybe.” 

Gabriel stared at the innocuous picture, feeling his jaw clench, his hands clenching into fists. So the safety the flock had been feeling all this time was an illusion. He hadn’t sensed any other wingless, but the wingless obviously had more sources- they would know the patterns of the Others better than he would. 

He jumped a little as the wingless woman stepped forwards. He couldn't help the way he tensed. She glanced at him, then took the writing-stick from Sam’s hand, scribbling more onto his drawing. When she stepped back Gabriel saw that more had been added. Circling the trees and mountains of his territory, there was a line, drawn in thick and dark, encircling it completely. The arrow from the Others no longer led to the centre of Gabriel’s territory- instead it bounced off the thick protective line. 

The wingless woman looked at him intently, tapping at the line. “Sanctuary. It’s not here, it’s another place, over the mountains, but we’d be able to protect you there. We’d keep you safe from them.”

Gabriel frowned, looking back at the map. He understood. So this was their plan. The wingless would take them to this ‘sanctuary’ and protect them from the Others. 

But if that barrier kept the Others out… would it be just as good at keeping the flock inside? He looked up at Sam’s face, at his torn expression.

Calmly, Gabriel reached down and pushed the drawing back towards the woman. “No.”

Her face fell. “No? But…”

Gabriel shook his head. "No. No sanctuary." If the Others found them, then he might reconsider, but for now that risk wasn’t worth their freedom. 

The woman drooped, hunching in on herself. Then she took a deep breath and pulled herself upright. “Alright. Okay. If that’s what you want. But it’s there if you ever want it, okay? Come on, Sam, I need your help. We’ve got some phone calls to make”

Gabriel nodded at her. He watched her turn away and walk back to camp. Sam gave him a small, shy smile as he turned to go. 

“See you tomorrow?”   
  
Gabriel smiled back at him, his wings flicking. Alfie was going to be alright, and his flock were safe, for now. Which meant that his wooing could continue. “Tomorrow.”

Sam left as well. Gabriel turned away from the wingless camp, putting a hand on Alfie’s shoulder.

_ “Come on you. Let’s go back to the others.” _


End file.
